Bloggedy blog

The temporal nature of blogs makes it an ill-suited medium for a traditional manifesto. Manifestos seem so absolute - a public, didactic declaration of one's thoughts and views - clearcut and unyielding. Blogs, however, die without constant update. Would anyone read a blog with just one entry, dated decades earlier? What goes viral on the web lack any of the characteristics of a manifesto - (Ass Pennies* vs. Vers une architecture).

Yet because of the ability to constantly update, the blog is more suited to he true purpose of the manifesto: expressing one's thoughts and views. How many of the manifestos and monographs have we read have the authors' work or later publications modified or retracted what they originally declared? How many times are those edits heeded or mentioned? The published manifesto is static, a declaration in time with a tendency to speak for all mankind. The blog is personal, the reader is always aware that someone typed these words out on their laptop or PC, possibly drunk, possibly in their underwear. And if your blog is open to comments, your manifesto can be immediately detracted, criticized or flamed by anyone - ANYONE - and given that they are in the same medium, comments are automatically on the same level as the blog post. Any criticism of published manifestos aren't attached to the actual document.

So in random and personal rambling, I'm just going to throw out there with no evidence or three supporting points, that maybe the blog is a democratizer/humanizer and with access and inundation of everyone's** thoughts, the publication of one person's thoughts are de-deified and more open to contestation (that is a real word. I checked.)

*I do not mean to detract from the value of Ass Pennies at all.
**"everyone" with access to a computer and internet. Which is not really everyone.

Did you know Ice Cube is an architecture fan?

Recommended by Stasia last week.

it’s so easy to just write it’s so easy to be illegible to produce garbage run on run away useless unedited drivel with or without punctuation or point no thesis no direction no audience with the idea that people will read your words and be moved moved to act moved to think moved to do better or more or less that publication as it mattered once before still matters only now it’s available to everyone and its free and accessible and anyone who has an idea can get it out into the world without having to go through the gatekeepers the fatuous publishers the tastemakers the style police the authorities on all that is right and good and worth while what a waste how much better to let it be open and free and like milk the cream will rise to the top and people will recognize what is worthwhile and meritorious from the millions and millions of other blogs and notes and posts trust in the crowd trust in the hive it doesn’t matter if you have ability or talent you simply have to do whatever you’re doing already publically and find your true community online and share your experiences your daydreams your passing thoughts your need for connection your longing your ignorance or irreverence your indifference who cares about accuracy and credibility your people will trust you and you will find trustworthy people and you won’t get duped or fooled and if you do it will be interesting and funny and because it was genius and inspired and original you won’t feel the knife go in and it’s so much better than the tedium of journalistic writing anyway and besides no one would ever publish what we have to say these days so what is the alternative we have no choice this is what we can do and it’s free or mostly free and that is what makes it valid and worth pursuing and the skeptics are fuddy-duddies anyway from a bygone era and what they have to say about the smell and feel of newspapers and books is completely silly and irrelevant since they’re cutting down trees to make that paper anyway and cutting down trees is bad and lousy and we really shouldn’t do that anymore so let’s just get out and take pictures of the things we like and make movies of ourselves doing stuff and make montages and say things that make us seem smart and curious and interested and interesting and disinterested in marking and selling what we do and talk more about other people’s work than we do about our own so that people see us as helpful critics since it’s impossible to keep a blog going that is only filled with your stuff because making stuff takes time and blogs need to be curated daily so who cares if the blog becomes a kind of second job or pursuit just don’t imagine you’re ever going to make any money doing it or that you’re going to develop a business or brand or monetize on content or gain any real media exposure or even get a book deal or get bought by a larger company because I read somewhere online today in someone’s blog that in 2010 there were 300 million websites and 300 billion emails sent out each day 90% of which was spam and 100 trillion emails a year 2 billion internet users worldwide and 150 million blogs on the internet and 25 billion tweets and 10 million people following @ladygaga on twitter and that she is the most followed user on twitter and it seems discouraging that the largest online personalities are also the largest real life personalities but it doesn’t matter because we hear about people all the time who just did this thing out of their kitchens and did it on the side and one day they made it big because of their blog or whatever and they developed a loyal following and those people supported them when they became famous and recognizable even though they stopped using their blog at that point and one day if you do your blog really well you can stop writing too and perhaps you’ll get a book published that people will ignore but maybe I’m just being negative because I don’t have a blog yet and this is going to be my first blog post ever and it’s all about how useless blogging is and what if someday I actually discover that I need a blog since I can’t afford to have a book published or if I do publish a book that no one will read it or that no one reads anymore and it’s all just videos and talking heads and spoken word and everyone markets themselves by sourcing other people’s lives and I can’t market myself because someone finds this blog and posts it to my website and my followers or subscribers or clients or friends or whatever decide that I’m a turncoat and abandon me and my business fails and so I think I should publish this anonymously but if I do I won’t get class credit for it so I’m caught between needing credit and not wanting to be credited and it’s driving my a little nuts and then I think that the only real truth in all of this is that no one is actually reading this blog anymore because it’s too long and because it’s crazy and no one reads crap like this because they really shouldn’t and the joke is on you if you’re still here and so I could say anything at this point and it wouldn’t matter and perhaps this would be a good place to say something meaningful like what I really care about as a designer or perhaps include a manifesto but then again no one would read it and I guess that’s kind of my point and I want this to fill the entire page but I’ve run out of things to say and so I’m just going to keep writing so it looks like a full page since it’s really not about words anymore and that’s really the point to remember

This and That

From two years ago, but still relevant, Archive and Conquer on the "curation culture" that dominates today's art and design blogs. Swimming through the world of tumblrs - whether this one or this one or this one, or even this one - or limited membership image boards, like ffffound, or image-heavy blogs, like dezeen and space invading, can be a perfectly lovely way to spend an hour. But it always leaves me feeling slightly sick. It's super-condensed visual aesthetic excitement in an easy to consume format. Like drinking port and listening to eurodance, it's best done late in the evening when you're already a little buzzed.

Curatorial blogs can be wonderful when done well, like things magazine. But things is run by a group of former and current curators from the Victoria and Albert Museum. It's run by professionals and it feels like it.

Geoff Manaugh proved that you could blog your way to respect and authority in the architecture world (and a teaching gig at Columbia), but I wonder if it would be possible to tumbl your way to the same position? Could you run a tumblr that exercised such charmingly insightful collecting and achingly exquisite taste that you were invited to teach a studio at Princeton? Or could you demonstrate such a vast knowledge of so many different obscure veins of architectural practice that MIT invited you to teach history and theory?

Maybe collections of images on microblog platforms shouldn't be judged by their value for public consumption but instead by the educational value their offer their proprietors. A few months ago Jelena and I decided to start Pinterest accounts and see who could get the most repins, likes, and followers with our architectural taste. It totally changed the way I looked at architecture online. Suddenly the bar for what I liked became much higher. I actually stopped and thought about whether or not I really liked things, and, most importantly, what the Pinterest community might think of them. I looked at images much less passively and much more thoughtfully.

Neither of us racked up an especially high number of repins and likes, but I think we did pretty okay for only being at it for a day or two. The contest quickly devolved into posting pictures of foxes and red pandas so we decided to stop. I think Jelena came out slightly ahead. She deleted her account a while back but my page is still kicking around here.

Streams of conscious thought.

In this post I am at liberty to be instructive (http://smittenkitchen.com), perverse (http://www.terrysdiary.com), disjointed, opinionated, flattering, racist (http://rabidrepublicanblog.com), sexist (the blog in question has been removed but this gives an overview of the content: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/senate-hopeful-says-he-takes-full-responsibility-for-blog-posts), coherent, concise, unintelligible, witty (http://failblog.org), etc etc. Its tone and content are subject in its entirety to my personal choice and opinion, with the only consequence of my writing being the reaction of the reader to my sentiment and their resultant views on my character and intellect. Let me thus, by choice, begin somewhat anecdotally…

I was once a serial blog addict. Reading, looking and listening, not writing. It was a few years back, when I had frequently featured on a community radio show for a brief period of time in Melbourne (not quite a claim to fame) and was constantly in search for not only new music but the opinion of said music, as readily offered by trusted aficionados. I was also quite partial to building road bicycles and was consequently a frequent visitor to blogs such as http://fixedgearbikes.blogspot.com/, etc etc. These blogs served to expand my knowledge in my areas of interest by exposing me to the work and opinions of others, which in turn influenced the decisions I made regarding what to emulate, desire, promote, avoid and of course, what to play on my show.

After relocating to Berkeley, my lust for blogs in general waned rapidly and I wondered if it had just been a passing fancy. However, my interest was reignited last October when I obtained a press pass to the CMJ Music and Film Marathon (for the hell of it but really under the guise of a music correspondent for the Melbourne radio station) in New York, which is a showcase of upcoming artists in combination with shows from well known performers, held every year for one week across a hundred or so venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Over 1000 artists were scheduled to perform and I was familiar with about 200 yet would only have been able to write knowledgably about 60-ish. A definite problem for me, when trying to decide whom to see, let alone critique or interview and true testament to the extents of the global market for popular culture. ‘Trustworthy’ music blogs yet again served their purpose in informing my decisions. Interestingly, throughout the course of the event, the notoriety of blogs and bloggers was consistently revisited, from conversations with Pitchfork writers at press events and panel discussions held by major labels that targeted the relevance of blogging to the industry, to the poignant sentiment of up-coming ‘grimewave’ (a genre… apparently) avant –rap artist, Cities Aviv in the intro to his seminal track, ‘Fuckeverybodyhere’: “Fucking bloggers, you fucking made me and you’ll fucking break me. Fuck you bloggers. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck everybody here…”.

Of course, parallels can be drawn between the mode of delivery, content and function of music blogs and blogs of virtually any specific area of interest, be it kite surfing or architecture. Due to the proliferation of digital media, blogging has become a widely disseminated forum for information, and though often unique in their content and format, the majority of blogs share a number of typological or functional characteristics. For instance, there are blogs that serve mainly as a means or promotion or advertisement, such as the well-known archdaily.com or archinect.com, whom, while providing opinion via the selection of work represented, mainly serve to describe projects through the documentation of their creators. Akin to music blogs like thehypemachine.com, these showcase the extents of work produced internationally, as curated by those, we can presume, with taste. Such blogs play an integral dual role for researchers, artists, and designers alike, as a free, highly accessible means of promotion and inspiration. The second category is defined by an emphasis upon critique and opinion – the author’s personal opinions and the opinions of others as re-iterated as seen in http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/ or http://www.new-territories.com/blog/– and despite endemic subjectivity, provides validation of our own position as contextualized within the opinions of others. This typology bears closer resemblance to the blogs precursor, the manifesto; characterized by rampant opinion and polemic discourse.

As is typical of manifestoes, bloggers often make claims to speak on behalf or a broader practice or provide disclaimers to the contrary. However, unlike the printed manifesto, whereby publication and dissemination are typically tied to the writers professional, academic, political, socio-economic or cultural status, the bloggers authority is typically defined through a ‘hits per site’ basis, where a greater audience leads to notoriety- indicating that credibility is gained through popularity as opposed to expertise. As understood and clearly articulated by Cities Aviv, the influence of blogs to shape both individual opinion and the collective sentiment of a profession places authoritative bloggers in a position of power– where the influence of the blog is simultaneously coveted yet feared. However, despite their sometimes-overwhelming influence, certain qualities of the blog such as its perceived transience and often-unmediated content undercut any delusions of grandeur that may be harboured. For instance, you wouldn’t cite a blog in an academic paper unless you were specifically writing about popular culture or really didn’t know any better. The opinions expressed in blogs are typically treated as ephemeral; fleeting glimpses that can be removed or revoked at any moment. Time stamped streams of conscious thought, unique in their frequency and brevity.

Speaking of which, as blogs are typically rather short in reflection of a general attention span, it would not be presumptuous to assume that I’d lost you after the second paragraph, so allow me to conclude abruptly by leading you on some random tangent. To another blog of course as such is the nature of these things. This is the blog of a good friend of mine who is an industrial designer. It’s called Atlas and it’s pretty great if you’re into looking at beautiful things in muted, complimentary tones: http://feltednebula.tumblr.com/

None

Does the blog format itself influence the architectural ideas its author wants to communicate? How do the media of the web shape the content of the discourse? The web makes everything less formal. I would never start an essay with a question - let alone two - but somehow it feels okay in a blog entry. Of course I've never had a teacher critique the format and style of my writing on a blog (maybe this week I will). Blogs seem at their best when they're a bit off the cuff, just a bit unpolished. The best architecture blogs read like the curious musings of a very intelligent and naturally eloquent individual. They should be well-written and easy to read, but also just hesitant enough - a kind of 'hey, this is just a blog, I'm just thinking out loud here' tone - that you feel you're getting a special insight into their thoughts and creative process. Good architecture blogs offer a combination of intellectual stimulation and gentle voyeurism in just the right proportion to win the battle with the back button.

Uses of the Architectural Blog

If this seems confusing, it's probably because I'm not a very good blogger. One annoying thing about blogs is that they're chronological, so you should really read the first blog post before you read this one and then read the comments on that post where Michael and I listed a bunch of blog entries to read.

In addition to the questions we asked on the first post, I am also curious how blogs serve various architects, for example:

François Roche
Lebbeus Woods
Ron Rael
Liam Young

and how they differ or complement other books and texts from the same architects. We are hoping to contextualize the blog in relation to manifestos and monographs.

You should, of course, write your paper here as a blog entry. And please post other interesting blogs for us to look at.