Julian Lwin

For those interested in using lighting effects and lighting technologies, you have to take a look at the work of Julian Lwin. He is a British designer who wrote his thesis on lighting and its effects on the human psyche. I believe that this could be useful in an airport if he is correct that certain blues are soothing etc...

You can find an article and images in the February Record.

Yet Blue Apologizes

The CEO of Yet Blue promises changes. I received a personal apology by email, maybe you did too. I found this video with it.

http://www.jetblue.com/about/ourcompany/promise/index.html?source=ap_2promise

Virtual Graffiti

Going off of the Guerilla art theme I came across this article today. Watch the video, it's worth it.



Via Engadget

Can Jetblue Survive Passenger Outrage?

"What JetBlue discovered is that its infrastructure is not yet strong enough to support bad-weather emergencies on a large scale. The communications system used to locate 11,000 pilots and flight attendants was not sophisticated enough to track down employees stranded by the storm and get them to the appropriate city."

Read More

airport security?

Spirit Air Airbus 319

After being crammed in that plane I thought that some of you might want to print out this image and do what you want to it.

I found this blog that had some art work from the Atlanta airport. I am guessing it's the same airport. I don't think we went to these areas so we missed out. I believe one was between T-terminal and concourse A and says the other was in the international terminal. I thought they were interesting, mostly the one on the right, its part of a collection. This should be the link... (but the one on the right is part of Atlanta airport 1)

blogs.bootsnall.com/moses/archives/010408.shtml

Learning from Las Vegas

Here's just some thoughts.The criticisms earlier of Atlanta Hartsfield airport is that it is indistinguishable from others. I guess it's fortunate we went to Vegas, as we got an experience of how much (or little) the Casinos differentiate themselves. Like an airport, they both pay a good deal of attention to traffic flow- people have to come in and know what to do. On one hand, they tend to be rather indistinguishable once your inside of them.... I often forgot whether I was in Caesar's Palace or the Venetian. On the exterior, they all went to great lengths to distingiush themselves, yet the interior suffered from criticisms I'm sure we'd all find relevant to the airport.

Connecting Region to Airport

Tank,

The part of your blog that I commented on got me thinking so I did some looking and here is one example of connecting the area w/the airport. It is a public art project by Seyed Alavi where he took an areal view of the Sacramento river and wove it into the carpet for the floor the the pedestrian bridge from the terminal to the parking area. There's 50 miles of river on this bridge and is in the Sacramento International Airport. It's a good way to remember a flight and also a good first impression when walking into this city. I think they need to go ahead and go Gehry with it and put one in every city. Here's the website: http://here2day.netwiz.net/seyedsite/publicart/flyingcarpet/flyingcarpetframe.html

Airport Statistics

Here are some statistics about the airport that I found. It's is about it's size, contents, and some comments of my own, so here they are:


-Hartsfield-Jackson is the busiest passenger airport in the world by accommodating more than 83.6 million passengers in 2004.
(No wonder their carpets look dingy.)
-More than 11 Astrodome playing fields would fit into the North and South Terminal.
(But could Barry Bond's hit one out of it?)
-There are 83 retail stores throughout the Airport.
(Ladies love it, men's wallets don't.)
-There are 77 food and beverage outlets throughout the Atlanta Airport.
(Majority of these are below par on the health meter.)
-Hartsfield-Jackson has more than 30,000 parking spaces.
(Car pool, please.)
-Concourse E has the capacity to handle up to 8,000 arriving passengers per hour.
(That about a plane a minute [133 people, 1 dog])
-Atlanta is closer to Chicago than New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore.
(Ok)
-The Atlanta Airport's cargo handling space is 1.7 million square feet.
(That's a hell of a lot of luggage)
-More than 200 million people, 80% of U.S. consumers, are within two hours' flight time from the Atlanta Airport.
(We're above average, we're only two hours driving time. That is an interesting stat though. It really show's how close the cities of the world are getting.)
-The Atlanta Airport has more than 1296 toilets.
(I think they didn't make it 1300 just so it wouldn't be unlucky)
-The Airport’s passenger terminal area sits on 130 acres or 5.7 million square feet.
(That's 260 of my front and back yards combined)
-There are more than 25,000 chairs in the Atlanta Airport.
-There are more than 53,000 light bulbs in the Atlanta Airport.
-The Atlanta airport currently has two terminals and six concourses.
-The $5.4 billion expansion includes a fifth runway, an East International Terminal, improved transportation and additional parking.

All of these images are part of my investigation of airports. I believe that the key to understanding these strange places is in understanding the threshold between ground and sky. The airport exists for airplanes and people. More to come...PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK or if you have seen other images of tracking takeoff and landing and people interacting with the plane from an unconventional perspective (ie not in plane)

the venus project

i found this interesting
this group designs many futuristic things ranging from transportation to housing to energy

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Learning From Las Vegas

In the reading Learning from Las Vegas, it is addressed that some architects believe that a building should be clear and concise to eliminate the need of signs. I feel that this is obviously the correct path to take in design, with the exception of a few examples. A court house is one of the most confusing buildings I have ever been in and without signs, I would have never found my desired destination. Another example may be and airport. In Las Vegas, signs are necessary to discern what building you are looking for amongst the clutter. With this in mind, this makes the sign’s importance supersede the importance of the architecture.

I found the design of the casino level very interesting. First having no windows to make it impossible to distinguish what time it is. The walls are made to be very dark to make the room seem limitless and keep concentration on the gambling. The effect needed to be achieved by the casino level is to convey privacy, protection, and concentration. This is very different from the older thought on the design of the casino, which was well lit, windowed, open, and uncluttered with furniture. This method gathers large groups together to gamble.

Quotes on Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

Believe it or not, people actually write reviews on airports. I thought I had no life, but I guess it's something to do while waiting for your flight. I think many of you (especially Will with working on the ceilings) and those who saw the Freemont St. Experience will probably find this useful. I think this review sums up my impressions of the airport really well:

Some quotes:
"It’s the concourses, though, that most people see, and that are easily the worst thing about Hartsfield-Jackson. The concourses are all more-or-less identical, hugely long and narrow rooms that stretch to the left and right from the central spine of the railway like giant ribs. You want your gate to be either in the high teens or the low twenties. A gate number like A2 or C32 means that you have a long trudge out to the remote end of the concourse. And it’s a dangerous trudge, too; the people walking the other way are just getting off a long flight, usually hurrying to make their connection, and consequently are not watching where they’re going. You’ve got to keep moving; if you stop even for a second somebody’s likely to run you over, whether it’s the hard-charging Delta stewardess battling a gate change, the surly airport employee driving the oversize golf cart, or just the ordinary everyday business traveler chatting obliviously on his or her cell phone.

It also doesn’t help that the concourses are so ugly. The ceilings are oppressively low. The carpets are worn and tattered. There aren’t nearly enough seats at each gate. Worse yet, there’s a sense of sameness everywhere, as though the five concourses were purchased at the same factory outlet of Airports-For-Less. If you’re not familiar with the layout – and most of the people changing planes don’t seem to be – the overall effect must be like wandering through one of those psych-class rat mazes, over and over again, except with a Starbucks every few feet or so.

Worse – and I think most damning – is that while you’re in Hartsfield-Jackson, there’s almost no clue that you’re in Atlanta, or Georgia, or even in the South. The same sort of generic creeping homogeneity and sameness that you find elsewhere in America, here and there, is present everywhere in Hartsfield. Outside of the presence of the city’s three major industries – Delta flights, CNN Airport News, Coca-Cola for sale at every kiosk – you’d never know you were in Atlanta. This is true of a lot of airports, but even at sterile outposts like Dallas-Fort Worth, you can get decent Dickey's barbecue and buy every kind of Dallas Cowboys merchandise known to man. ..."

Full Review: http://www.epinions.com/content_140767497860

Airport Security

I am sharing this photo that I received last semester. It made me smile as this is definitely the way one feels these days passing through security at the airports. I am also posting it in response to Frizzle’s posting on Feb. 8. You may also refer to an earlier posting of the photo of the human pupil - posted on January 28.

How is this different than the way we are presently scrutinized by the surveillance cameras which populate our environment? Which is more invasive?

Las Vegas Casino Death Watch

Las Vegas's vendetta against history is so great there's now a website dedicated to it:

Casino Death Watch (Link)

I'm willing to guess there are not many other places that progress along the time axis more than a physical direction.

the invisible shape of things past

The project enables users to transform film sequences into interactive, virtual objects. This transformation is based on the camera parameters relevant to a particular film sequence on screen: (movement, perspective, focal length). The individual frames of the film are lined up along the path of the camera. The angle of the individual frames relative to the virtual camera path depends on the view from the actual camera, whilst the size of the individual frames depends on the focal length used. The rows of pixels at the frames’ edges define the outer membrane of the film object.

Noriyuki Fujimura: Footprint Mapping

"Footprint mapping“ was an attempt to create a digital map of streets and public spaces by gathering "footprints" of participants of the project.
The aim of the artwork was to figure out how they could implement the concept of a “Psychogeographical map" with modern technology.
He created a mapping system consisting of cheap pedometer, digital compass, micro processor, web cam, and laptop computer. All of which were put in one backpack for someone to carry around.
At the end of each day a digital collage was put together of every participants footprint map.

Seale summary

Using a slit-scan camera, Seale captures motion in a new way. The moving objects come out clear and the still objects blur, which is opposite the way we usually see them. I feel that it is interesting because it allows you to see how and how fast the figure moves in front of the camera. It is easy to understand the photos when you understand how they are photographed, but on there own it is tough to realize the movement.

Did we ever have any plans or layouts of the airport?

Will, lol, did we ever have any drawings of the airport, anything we can look at and draw on top of????

CAMERAS RECORD THROUGH SECURITY!!!

video cameras roll through security; Terminal 352 exposed! more to come...

The image of the Luxor and many other themes casinos is more powerful than the spaces that make it up. Most casiono floors are the same in their low ceiling, chaotic maze layout, falling short of referencing the theme presented so boldly upon arriving or driving by. They took my money too.

Still Learning from Las Vegas - interview of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi

Here's a recent interview by Ten by Ten Magazine of Robert Venture and Denise Scott Brown regarding Las Vegas today. The Vegas that they mapped and wrote about more than 30 years is gone. Yesterday, during our drive we saw remnants. Read their thoughts on the Vegas of today and the influences of their research and writings.

http://www.tenbyten.net/vegas.html

On the Airport Terminal and Zoomscapes

The Airport Passenger Terminal gave a very pragmatic look into how airports function. I appreciate the points that it brings up about basic operations of the track, the size of concourses, the relationship of the plane to the terminal, etc. It gives us some direction in thinking about size of spaces and the general layout of airport terminals. There was nothing particularly profound in the article, but it was informative nonetheless.
The Zoomscapes writing however, does give a very abstract view of the flying experience. It describes in a way that I have experienced before, but have not necessarily thought about. He describes how the viewpoint from an airplane disconnects oneself from the human experience. No longer are you immersed and apart of the planet. You see architecture and humanity as a series of lines, squares, and triangles. The oblique view strips your connection from what you were just in a few minutes before. The article helps us to think about what the airport does to our sense of reality and how we view it.
I think a good question in terms of design would be how can we make this terminal significant and cohesive not only from that ground, but from where all passengers will eventually see it: the clouds?

A Flowing Cross-Section

This collection of panoramic views is a typical one of the Danube AV project. Each strip is a descriptive element of the cross-section. One could say it is simply tracing the landscape, but this goes further in that it maps the human development along, and in relation to the river. This mode of thinking is useful when designing. In order to fully understand the site, the architect should have a deep understanding of the people that have been/will be inhabiting the area. This project was a tool in which the this was carried out.

Undergarment Mapping

There is a new type of security scanner that is much more... descriptive than current ones. This device clearly maps all items on any person passing through it. There is the potential to greatly speed up security procedure in airports. Passengers would simply walk through the scanner and keep going. Of course, many are reluctant about the idea of their Victoria Secrets being so... not secret.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007040610,00.html

Scaling Time: The Video Streamer

Essentially the Video Streamer acts like an advanced flip book. The idea is to change the way we perceive the image and stack rapidly captured frames on one another to show movements that would have gone unnoticed.
It is important to capture the subject at the right time scale. By this I mean that some events happen in micro seconds, other events happen over the course of hours. Both are equally interesting and need to be examined differently.

Atta Kim's Long Exposure

Atta Kim a Korean photographer who looks at things in a different light. He uses lloonnnngggggg exposure times to show things that would not ordinarily be seen. He current exhibit is called"On Air" and is at the International Center of Photography. The website is, http://www.icp.org/site/c.dnJGKJNsFqG/b.1706759/k.9A54/Atta_Kim_OnAir.htm . Check it out.

FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS!!!!!!!! /%/

That is right!!! The Surveillance Camera Players fight for your rights; this group of individuals are exposing the governments video surveillance cameras all over New York and other major cities in the United States. They map video cameras in cities and neighborhoods to help fight for your rights to privacy go to SCP@notbored.org

Picture

GPS Drawing pictures

GPS drawing can be a very useful tool if used correctly. Instead of simply drawing pictures, we can use to GPS to track the flow of people or luggage through an airport for example. By attaching a GPS device to an individual, we can track that person’s course trough the airport seeing how they maneuver obstacles such as trash cans, other people, luggage, or chairs. We can also see the route taken when someone is trying to get food or go to the bathroom. With this information, controlling the flow can be made easier by creating paths that doing traverse long distances or become too confusing. Luggage can be tracked by GPS to see the most efficient and easiest way to transport the luggage to its desire destination. Given the x, y, and z coordinates of the luggage we can create a path that best fits to prevent mass confusion. The smaller amount of luggage that gets misplaced or lost, the better. By tracking these things through the airport we can easily find any problems with the flow of foot traffic or the operation of moving luggage.

Good Photo

Great news and possibilities

I recieved an email back from martin and he seems interested and hopefully we can get the software. So i will keep you all posted on the progress.
hi,

unfortunataly the software doesn`t work completely-
that means I have to simulate some features/ functions
as they don`t work in realtime.
I don`t know if you are still interested -but if you could
give me some more facts about your project maybe I
can help you.

very best,
martin

Threshold of Emotion/Sensory Overload

Blane you are my hero! We could map sensory overload...the threshold of when IT ALL just gets to be too much and we cross over into being some crazy person...everybody has a snapping point in airports. I bet it has happened to all of us. I doubt it is mappable though.

recording the inbetween

i was thinking maybe our cell phones can come into use as a recording device?

Das Flugzeug

The Airport Passenger Terminal was very informative, stating some rules and regulations of airports, while addressing when and where design can be utilized. Within the reading, I found the issue of manipulating flow was very important. The problem is how to combine primary and secondary flow without losing efficiency or creating a chaotic intermingling of the two distinct types of flow. I also found that the way the planes dock was a very interesting system, with multiple regulations, tightening the choke-hold on design. This compelled me because it made me curious as to how can you create art with these very specific restrictions. My question, what specific types of aircraft are going to be found at our terminals? I ask this because things like wingspan will have a drastic effect on our designs. Also, the larger the planes, the larger the lounge areas are going to be and number of concessions.

i guess ill take the GPS drawing

Project Selection

I'll do the Atta Kim

On Airports

I don't fly often, usually if the drive can be made in less than two days I simply prefer to drive or take a train. For me, flying is a an incredible novelty- I'm so withdrawn from the routine that each time it is fascinating to me. I rather enjoy the 'rush' from the entire experience- it's much like an amusement park ride, especially as mentioned in Zoomscape for the five-second period on land where you reach close to 150MPH. However, if I flew every time I went back to Cincinnati or took a trip, I would find it far more grating than enjoyable.

But as someone who doesn't fly often, it's almost exciting- there's the maze to find out just exactly where you are, getting through ticketing, getting your baggage checked, going through security, wondering if there's time to grab a quick snack, and preparing your baggage for the flight, and trying to find my terminal.

My preference for driving involves two things transition, and convenience. When flying, there practically is no sense of transition (hence jet-lag), and the novelty of this new view wears off, where by driving or by taking a train the surroundings are constantly changing. In fact, it's the only form of mass-transit where there is no transition- you aruptly enter different spaces (origin airport, airplane, destination airport) , instead of going through them (aka going from Clemson to Asheville to Knoxville, etc.) Even a train stops in various towns (some of which you'd never know existed) along the way.

If transition can't really be forced into flying, is there a way to at least make the experience more exciting and unique for those who rely on it without annoying those simply "putting up with it all?" I suppose hardcore flyers want the exact opposite: to make the airport as transparent as possible.

Readings

The world can be traveled through these wonders of modern society called airports. The particular realm of an airport and the enclosed world that it creates is something unique and quite interesting. The way I see it the airport is much like a watch but on a larger scale. By that I mean that there are all of these separate parts all different sizes completing different tasks, at different times, and at different speeds, but all working in unison to complete one purpose, count off seconds at a uniform rate. The airport does the same thing except it has a different purpose, connect the world through aviation. There are all particular variables needed to complete the task of the airport and the one main thing that makes this particular “machine” tick, is the clock, which tells time.

Reading Response and Question

The Flow and Function reading introduces us to the world of the airport, that up until now, I, like all other civilians, knew very little of. The details and distances from stage to stage, and from space to space are specific and necessary to the sucess of moving people. And that is where the fun began in the reading; when people are arriving and leaving and transfering. The Flow and Function piece layed the specifics for what Zoomscape: Airports, described. Between worlds in what I thought of as a time machine. It descibed a world in which time stops and the senses are put on hold, until you land in another city, in another airport. The word should be broken down AIR-PORT. The first part dives into a world that used to be magical and mystical. People would look forward to flying because of the different view from above, because they wanted to experience the sensations of new experience. The word PORT is a gate, a place that opens and is the threshold between the regular, everyday world and this mystical journey into the sky. It really is cool that we can fly, move through the sky, and defy gravity for hours at a time.


The problem now is that the the magical nature of flying has been stripped, instead replaced with the chaos and hastle of today's commercial airline experience. I want to use these articles to lay out a systematic, practical continum of spaces that is ALSO a PORT to the mystical world that was existed, and I believe we can return to. There is a kid in everybody, even the most seasoned, salted business traveler. If architecture is truth, than a design that incorporates both of the aforementioned will be able to make people think in a different way and feel comofortable in the AIRPORT.

Is this Possible? or am I just dreaming?

readings - toni

The view from an airplane is amazing because you can see so much. The odd thing is that it’s faster then traveling by car or train but its view is less skewed from the movement. Because your view is so omniscient the skewing takes place in a different way. It’s more of a vertical and spatial disfigurement. You don’t get the feeling of the heights of the buildings as you would looking up from the streets, instead you get a view of the top of buildings separated by little squiggly lines. The view does allow for a greater understanding of layouts and encourages new ideas to fix planning issues. Thought the view from the sky is interesting, flights begin and end in a complex structure that relies greatly on time.
Airports are multifaceted buildings where the survival of order depends greatly on everything being on time and in proper order. Every time something happens to delay or interrupt the expected flow, it takes awhile to get things back in order. The amount of people going through an airport at one time is more then you would even notice on a trip there. There are many separate areas that you never even see while following the path to your own destination. The introduction of things to occupy passengers’ time is compliant.
The amount of new things that pop up in and around airports is not that surprising. There are many people that pass through them so it is natural for businesses to be interested in getting as many customers as possible. When flights get delayed or when you’re waiting between flights, it’s nice to have stores to go to, places to eat, and hotels. I believe that adding too much could be a bad thing. I don’t know if so much of this should be open to the public as well as passengers. Too many people could make it harder to keep things organized and simple enough to perform the original job of an airport.

What effects does the increased amount of people by allowing public and passenger use have on the workings of the airport? Does it make security or timing issues worse?

it was mindblowing to think of all the programs an airport has. i would like to see a plan of the entire airport and ones trajectory from parking lot to his/her flight. i think these readings prove the advantages of the airplane over trains and boat ect. i now agree with will on the thing in class when he said 'airports have only broke even since their exsistence. think about all the employees and equipment an airport has to consider, then think about the average ticket price and spread the money around the airport, it doesn't go very far. my questions, i guess after reading all this would be, does the inside of an airport function like the outside of an airport? how important to a home owner is a bird's eye view, since they will never see it, and what is the difference between the ways airplanes, car, boats and trains use space? /%/

Reading Summary

Reading the articles, I found it interesting that people are so fascinated with airports and airplanes, but only for a short while. For most people, it is an unknown, until they need to fly somewhere, then they realize the hassle that comes with flying. Interestingly enough, movies rarely show these hassles, usually only showing people running through the airport or sitting around waiting, but rarely the irritation that comes with the other aspects of airports. People are enthralled with the view out the windows during take off and landing, but in between they lose interest, they cannot make sense of the ground below them, they are not part of it so they don't want to acknowledge it. So why else do people stop thinking that airports and airplanes are amazing? How can we keep this fascination alive long into the experience of flying?

Research

I'll take Footprint Mapping.

!

I think I will go with the Danube Panorama Project--------- .

mine

Ansen Seale - Temporal Forms

Scratch Atta Kim

The recreating movement will further my studies of motion! sorry for the hassle!

Mine

I will be taking Volumetric Video.

My Claim

I will be taking Atta Kim's Real Time Photographs

"GPS Mapping experiment fails- Canadians won't steal just anything "

From the Ottawa Citizen:
"Nestled inside a 13-inch television, the GPS phone, along with a battery pack, could transmit its location back to us for 36 hours.
Wherever that TV went in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, we could watch its progress on a map of the city.
Now all we had to do was get the TV stolen"

Full Article Here:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/story.html?id=52f5a3c8-5dbb-4c8d-8445-c0ab276bac51&k=0

I will take "The Invisible Shape of Things Past"

Frank will be taking "The Invisible Shape of Things Past..

I am going to take, "The Video Streamer: Showing the Path of Time."

i am taking Walking Tours of Chelsie and Times Square - The Surveillance Camera Players

Blane is taking Walking Tours of Chelsie and Times Square - The Surveillance Camera Players

guerilla artists arrested in Boston

two guys were arrested in Boston for promoting cartoon networks late night sensation 'aqua teen hunger force'. the bomb squad was called in and all the promotion devices, which consisted of neon light signs with the character 'shake' on them were confiscated and destroyed. The video showed the two guys useed a very interesting tool that allowed them to hang the flashing neon signs very high apon buildings and awnings. the two promoters are currently filing law suits.

Pick your reference projects for research!

To the right of the Blog there is a list called Project List. Pick from this list one project, author or organization and research their methods and approaches to either mapping and/or manipulating the information collected. You are to prepare a 5 minute power point of your findings to be presented during studio on Monday. You are to also format a 24 x 24 plot graphic representation of your findings to post in our studio wall.