torsdag 29. april 2010

and another friend


new friends just keep poppin up, Tommy Jensen is a smalltown boy, anxious about moving to Grønland, he asks the forum stupid questions, maybe yes, maybe no, lets say so..

my new friend




At facebook, a site dealing with "the love" of Grønland exist, people write about their love towards the neighbourhood, posting beatiful pictures to show the perfect multicultural world they think Grønland is. What we need is even more tension, what happens when we start playing a game with them, fooling around with their perception, will they even notice or care about it at all. My newly found friend at facebook, miss Lena Linares, will throw the dice and start the game, mohahaha

Burka fashion show

Inside the Grønland Bazaar

POWER STRUCTURE



Two of the most feared public buildings in the city are located at Grønland. The Prison of Oslo and the Police Headquarters, in the first you end up if you fuck up, in the latter you end up if you fuck up a little. (Prison vs. Arrest.) They are out of touch with the sphere they coexist with, the scale is to big and they create a distance to the rest of the area, becoming isolated islands of power. The authorities will allways have this need of showing off the structures of power, but, in this case the distance tend to get a litle bit too much.
What are the implications regarding the governments negative charachter, when the authorities distance itself so strongly from the rest of the neighbourhood? The amount of money spent on police increases each year, the proximity wich comes with police foot-patrols gets decreased each year. Result; the broken window theory, mistrust towards the power, mistrust towards the ones that are their to secure equal right to society.

found footage

found some dead fish on a walk last sunday. huge and smelly and ugly looking. fascinating and oh oh so relevant: I pictured it.

wrong direction


Trying to get into the debate about information, displays and whatnot, it seems like alot of people are aiming for a society where the most relevant is the ambient information. Dreams about dynamic signs with correlated data gathered from the local area, then displayed at larger than life billboards. This type of "information display" is just a hidden agenda for commercialization of the cityscape, it all ends up like a Hollywood flick, like in Minority Report, Tom Cruise runs around, bombarded by ads tailored to his place, time and identity, its a real world horror house.

onsdag 28. april 2010

THERES A JUNKIE IN EVERY TOWN


the stash of hash...
Mr. Harry Jones...
need for speed...
the thrill of the pill...


After working at Grønland at a bar for quite some time I have made some interesting encounters with strangers, people I really dont wanna be friends with but at the same time needed to hook up with in order to see ”the secret societies”.

Last monday I hooked up with ”Mike”, a local heroin dealer, pushing at street level.
Mike is an infamous character working at Vaterland, one of the main spots for the heroin trade in Oslo.
Mike wanted to show me how the drugtrade worked and agreed to help me score some dope. Within the short period of an hour we bought heroin, amphetamine, funky blue pills and some hash. Due to implications on the criminal consequences, Mike was bying the dope while I was witnessing.
It was an interesting experience, now I got the first hand information I need in order to map this part of the chaos. Prices do vary, for a user dose of heroin the price was 250, amphetamine set us back a 100, the pills were 20 each and the hash was 100 a gram. The hard drugs was bought at Vaterland from a white dealer, while the hash was bought from illegal african immigrants innside the metrostation at Grønland.
Later we tried to score some khat but the somalies dealing the drug Grønlandstorget was suspicious towards non-somalians bying the drug, so the idea of bying this got abolished. I left ”Mike” with the drugs for him to enjoy alone, heading back to Bergen. Will hook up with him again and talk more about the trade, the the dealers and the customers when I return to Oslo for the second part of the analysis.
Even though the police do their best to stop this and interupte this type of affairs it was extremely easy to get the stash we wanted. A junkie is a junkie 365-24/7 so the business is never closed.
No matter what you think of drugs, I like the idea of a selfsustainable economy operating within its own context and by its own complex system.
NIVAs surveys from the water treatment plants in Oslo in 2007 indicates 15 cocaine doses per 1000 inhabitants per day. This gives us 8700 doses of cocaine in Oslo snorted up the nose every day. Cocaine addicts stand out from the users of heroin and amphetamines due to the fact that they often only use the stuff in the context of a party (some party everyday…). For the users of heroin the party is definitely over. It is estimated that between 8,200 and 12,500 inhabitants in Oslo is addicted to heroin and amphetamine and their injection of the drugs is extremely harmful to health.
An average user of heroin need on average 760 NOK a day to meet their as an amphetamine user can operate on 290 NOK. (Figures from SIRUS 2004)
- We are at Grønland metro station daily and arrest people. Steadily. Every day, all year round, 365 days a year, we arrest ten people in our circle of drug crime, "says Stølen, chief of police at Grønland Police Station.

EBOY-FUTURE_OSLO


German pixelators EBOY made a future vision of Oslo in 2007.

OpenGraph


Facebook’s Open Graph initiative could conceivably create an Internet where digital music services will know each user’s musical preferences the minute they navigate to their site, and automatically cue up the playlists, recommendations and music geared toward them without going through today’s painful process of “teaching” the service to recognize their tastes. That’s because Open Graph is designed to track those tastes on every other site users are on. With Open Graph, Site A learns from the activity on Site B. That’s what’s missing today on the Internet and that’s what Open Graph is trying to provide. If we disregard the problematics concerning ones privacy and how the developers and owners of sites like this misuse this information to get more cash we see the beginning of a new form of recognition, a responsive system that changes accordingly to your taste and thus reinvents oneself.

mandag 26. april 2010

STORING INFORMATION


To ensure the existing vegetation to global disasters such as nuclear accidents, plant diseases and other threats that can destroy plants, up to three million different seeds are stored in the permafrost in Svalbard. The norwegian government have created and built up the worlds largest colection of seeds. Gene banks around the world sends duplicates of all of its seeds to Svalbard. Thus, seeds from around the world is secured for the future. The vault is built 130 meters above sealevel, if all the ice in the world would have melted, the maximum rise of the sealevel will be 75 meters, meaning the vault is safe. To secure all this seeds for eternity is then, as done here, an easy task, human kind have quite an understanding of the worlds plants.
Then, what about the types of information we want to store, like the technological one.
The short term storage is quite easy, the problem starts to occur when we need to save this info long term. The best solution so far is the archival quality compact disk, and this is expected to last for app. 100 years. The other way to deal with the long term storage is UVC (universal, virtual, computer) wich require data to migrate from one system to another, allways changing the storage room. So, the securing and storing of data has become a Sisyphys task, a continious rearrangement of the data, moving bits from one system to the next with no end in sight. Eternity has now become procedural.

TRANSMITTING INFORMATION



Together, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 -- twin probes launched on September 5, 1977 and August 20, 1977 -- represent the most successful planetary exploration mission of all time. In their flybys of all the outer planets except Pluto, and dozens of other planetary bodies, the Voyagers set the benchmark in planetary exploration on an undertaking that has come to be deemed as one of NASA's greatest triumphs.

The two 1-ton spacecraft returned more knowledge-changing data than any mission before or since: stunning photographs that consistently revealed our solar system to be much more diverse, complex, and beautiful than anyone ever imagined, and a veritable bounty of scientific information to go along with them. On board each Voyager spacecraft is a time capsule: a 12-inch, gold-plated copper disk carrying spoken greetings in 55 languages from Earth's peoples, along with 115 images and myriad sounds representing our home planet.

Even now, both Voyager spacecraft are still communicating with Earth. Many of their instruments are still functioning, as the two spacecraft head in different directions out of the solar system on their Interstellar Mission. Voyager 1 has now passed the termination shock, where the solar wind abruptly slows down as it pushes against the interstellar medium. On the 17. of February 1998 the Voyager 1 took over for Pioneer 10 as the artificial body farthest from Earth. The distance of the probe was at the time of 10.4 billion kilometers, and the radio signals used 9 hours and 36 minutes to cover this distance.

A DIFFERENT REALITY PT. 2


This Guardian article reports on the Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Project.”Heading the project is Tokyo University professor Ken Sakamura -who, with the aid of the Japanese government, is well on his way to building the world’s first truly public ubiquitous computer network. It’s “an infrastructure for the 21st century”, he says, adding that it will see our everyday landscape guide us, inform us and generally hold our hand in an increasingly puzzling world.Sakamura foresees scenarios resembling those in the film Minority Report, where the hero passes intelligent ad boards and shops in the mall which acknowledge him by name and try to flog him stuff. However the real-life version, in Japan at least, will be less intrusive, Sakamura insists.
“With this system the user is in complete control. As a user of such a network we will see our enviros us,” Sakamura says. “We seek only to chip or tag objects and the environment, never people. With this system you can choose to read which you wish. The ubiquitous communicator - the pocket device you use to read the information around you - CAN ONLY READ AND WRITE, which means YOUR IDENTITY IS PROTECTED.”
This is an important fixture of projects like this, one must divide between protecting peoples private sphere and at the same time allow enough information to exist in order to make the complexity of it work.
Japan’s government sees enormous benefits from making every object readable this way. Improved guidance for the blind is one, painless interactive guidance for the tourists Japan desperately yearns for is another, and even salarymen and befuddled gaijin reporters trying to get around hostile cities will benefit from the scheme. Working with Sakamura’s outfit and Japan’s top technology companies such as Hitachi, the country’s Information Ministry has just spent ¥1bn (NOK 45millions) on a month-long field trial that covered several blocks of the famous Ginza shopping district.During the trial last month, PDA-style communicators were handed out to reporters and tourists, who were then free to wander around picking up information on their PDAs as they went.
Anyone emerging with a communicator at the Ginza metro station, for example, had a 3D, real-time image of the landscape above them beamed to their PDA, making it a cinch to see which exit you might want if you were headed, say, for the Mitsukoshi department store. Head towards the store itself and RFID tags in the building sense your presence then zap to your PDA a woman’s image welcoming you to the store. To learn more about this Tokyo landmark’s history, touch the screen.In the future, commercial applications could include pushing you news of sales if you have registered interest, or even digital money-off coupons to tempt you inside.Getting commerce involved is important, says Sakumura, as the cost of building the infrastructure will be gargantuan”.


Tokyo ubiquitous technology project
The Guardian

A DIFFERENT REALITY



People tend to get so caught up in their own sphere of reality that a different form of logic can really freak us out. The Japanese addressing system is used to identify a specific location in Japan. In Japanese, addresses are written using the opposite convention from Western addresses, starting with the biggest geographical entities down to the more specific ones. They have developed a hierarchical structure, zooming in on the right building. They start wide, then zoom into the exact location step by step. In Tokyo, streets dont have names. Blocks are numbers, streets are just the empty space in-between blocks. The buildings inside the block are numbered in order of age, the first building built there is #1. The second is #2, even if it's on the opposite side and so on. Nowadays we have developed new tools to identify streets, buildings and blocks. I could if I liked to do so, adress my front door by its latitude/longitude and people could simply find it by using their mobilephone and its GPS device. What Im thinking of is this different reality, every system works as long as people understands how to read them.

tirsdag 20. april 2010

ROOFTOP JUNK


a mapping of the GSM(red),NMTM(yellow) mobile phone towers in the area. These towers are a part of the new infrastructure called SSC-sensor, software, connectivity, and shows how this structure build a new layer on top of the "traditional" infrastructure, WGE-water, gas, electricity, in the city. SSC is designed to excist in the background, blend in with other rooftop junk and its signal is only readable through another device, i.e the mobilephone. This means that its signals are meaningless without a way to ACCESS them, in this case the phone becomes the KEY or the CODE to understand the rooftop installations.

criminal city


Mapping the criminal use of the city by examining the police reports. Some of the information, like stick-ups are site specific (down to the exact spot) while other data (like violence) are more general, only showing the zones where the violence is most agressive. I will further into this and try to make it even more specific. WHY is this relevant? Maps like this makes transparent something that absolutely shapes both the affective experience of being in the city and the choices we make there-the actuality of street crime-and by plotting these reported incidents an a map we visualize the exact knowledge. What if this information was ambient- that the information came to you while you where in that place? Sensing this through walking in the street, would one feel different when one had the exact INFORMATION, NOT just ASSUMPTIONS on the conditions on the crime/ dangers on the street?

YITV


YITV (young immigrant TV) is a project related to Riverside, the youth club located at Grønland.
Theyre aim is to give the kids a voice and to stop prejudice towards Grønland.

income


The average salary in Norway was according to SSB 410.400 NOK (2008)
The average income in Urtegata, one of the streets at Grønland was 86.000 NOK, the lowest average income in all of Norway. People rely on social assistance, in 2004 one out of every fifth NOK on the governments social budget was used in Oslo. In the inner city, 8.5% are considered poor. There are also great differences within the city and also a great variation within each boroughThere are significant differences in median income for households between districts in Oslo. For all types of household income is generally higher in the western parts than in the eastern parts. The differences are especially for people living alone and the highest for couples with children 0-17 years and households with older children. For example, the average couple with children 0-17 years, is almost twice as high in the borough Vinderen (691.700 NOK) compared to Gamle Oslo (350.800 NOK). So, what does this really tells us; differnces are everywhere, on every scale, within every building...

Grønland Bruktmarked


Every saturday, all year around, people gather to visit the fleamarket under the bridge at Grønland. Its a sweet mix of used electronics, furniture, clothes, stolen goods etc, just like any market anywhere...On the best days, over 10 000 people gather here to check out this vast collection of items. Last year the police had a razzia and had to throw 11 out a total of 50 vendors in jail due to sale of stolen goods, police got back two months later and this time 14 of the vendors got put away. This is probably a discussion around how to sell stolen goods, what is stolen goods and do people really care weather the goods they buy are stolen or not, probably not.
Each year each and everyone of us throw away app.1000 kg of waste, markeds like this redistribute some of this waste and prolongs the lifecycle span, one then may argue that its environmental friendly. Anyhow, it keeps the area vibrant and is an important fixture in keeping the city alive...

mandag 19. april 2010

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE….


Once again I was thinking about McLuhan; ”Information wants to be free”.
I started to look into the average spending on information, the infrastructure of the minds. It was hard to find something about this on norwegian issues, but found some articles about it in New York Times, which, even though its american figures, can still provide us with some background material. It used to be that a basic $300-a-year phone bill was your main telecommunications expense and some postal stamps where the cost for your written communication. But by 2004, the average American spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau. By 2008, that number rose to $903, outstripping inflation. By the end of this year, it is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cellphone service and the average family is spending as much on entertainment over devices as they are on dining out or buying gasoline. And these figures do not take into account movies, music and television shows bought through iTunes, or the data plans that are increasingly mandatory for more sophisticated smartphones. This means that there will be a gap between the ones who are willing and able to pay for this access and those who want.
Even though we think we have now reached the information society, its not like that for everyone, the costs to keep the information free are for some quite an obstacle.
What we realy pay for now is not free information, we pay for CONTENT, and the abbility to get ACCESS to this content. If we look at the data available to us we will see that we pay alot to gett he ACCESS, but, we pay a very small sum for the available CONTENT.
The reason we pay less for content is simple: There is more content available than there is time to consume it.

lørdag 17. april 2010

screening circle


screening circle
The graphics are a collaborative product and should be considered part of the creative commons.As one draw in this circle one may notice icons changing, because other people are drawing at the same time.

fredag 16. april 2010

SCENERY





What is a map, what is a photo, through deconstruction of a city scape one makes new ones, combining knowledge with reflection, with emotions, with facts, with recollection etc... made this little rubiks cube last night, the ortophoto is in 1:5000 scale of Grønland, all laid out in the right way, started to twist, to turn, gets to complicated, Ill never get it right, been working all night.

the consequences of volcanos


Drove the whole night from Bergen towards Oslo, a lot of construction work on the streets so we sometimes had to stop and wait, all planes where on ground due to the fantastic volcano. Had a smoke, started to talk to the guys behind us, they where going from Radøy to Ukraina to do some "bizziness", 3500 kilometers, when no airplane, buy a car and drive, love the way the volcano has an impact on someones lives...

torsdag 15. april 2010

SHOP TILL U DROP...




The importance of the retail sector.
In 2008 the total trade turnover for the retail sector in Oslo was 41.5 billion NOK.
42% of its total trade was going through the city's 47 shopping centers.
The area of Gamle Oslo, Grønland, had a total trade turnover wich was 1664 million NOK. Grønland seperates itself from the rest of the city with the fact that here, most shops and grocery stores are not chain retail, its mostly small scale, family owned businesses and although they dont contribute to the city´s economy in the same way as the shopping malls or chain stores they most certainly add flavour and distinction to the street life and how people live theire lifes. Fresh goods are displayed on the streets outside the shops, creating an everchanging scenery wich reflects the seasons, the marketprices and other ephemeral factors.
The display of the goods also reflects the national heritage, taste and preferances.
The only shopping mall in the area is the Olav Thon owned “Grønland Bazar” a ridiculously looking building which in a horrible way mimics the western idea of how a middle east bazaar looks like. The center wich holds 18 shops had a toatl turnover of 125 million NOK, 8% of the neighbourhoods total retail turnover. Vinmonopolet is situated inside the center and its viable to think they stands for a great percentage of the total turnover, the question to ask is then, WHY is the state controlled Vinmonopolet supporting the gentrification of the area, WHY did they choose to establish inside of this center and NOT on the street? What kind of mechanisms comes into play when the government work side by side with the biggest property developer in Oslo, this smells GENTRIFICATION subsideded by the GOVERNMENT.

VOLCANOS


Its the totality of chaos, a volcano eruption on Iceland have paralyzed ALL airtraffic throughout northern europe. Its dark clouds travel with immense speed towards Norway. Volcanoes are a much-feared peril in civil aviation, disgorging fine ash that can damage jet engines, choke the hi-tech probes used in modern avionics and scour a plane's windscreen to the point of invisibility
Its uncertain when the planes once again can be back in the air, its the butterflyeffect, the mother of CHAOSTHEORY!

SOCIAL DIFFERENCES


In the district of Gamle Oslo wich Grønland is a part of 1 out of 9 is a recipient of social assistance, the numbers for the more prospering areas of the city (Vestre Aker) is 1 to 50. 22% of the kids under the age of 18 lives in a household that receives social assistance. The overall number for the city is 5,4%.
Why do we have this figures? What kind of information can we withdraw from them?
In the municipality Oslo there is a total of 10.000 social housing appartments, 48% of these are situated within the inner east city core and this accelerates the fact that the city is a divided universe. The problem is NOT that there are social housing, the problem is WHO gets social housing and what kind of environments the social housing provides for the ones who lives there with theire families, raing theire kids.
Two political decisions from the Oslo City Council have worked together and reinforced each other. In 2004, it introduced market rent and ended all subsidies of rent. Instead, the ones who needed it could get direct housing subsidies. At the same time, new rules where inforced to who is allowed to rent appartment in municipal housing. The new rules do not any longer require that the clients should have so-called "boevne"- to have ability to take care of them self. Released prisoners, former institutionalized people and refugees are mentioned explicitly.

WALLRAFF UNDERCOVER RESEARCH


Gunter Wallraff came to prominence thanks to his striking journalistic research methods and several major books on lower class working conditions and tabloid journalism. This style of research is based on what the reporter experiences personally after covertly becoming part of the subgroup under investigation. Wallraff would construct a fictional identity so that he was not recognisable as a journalist. In this way, he created books which denounce what he considers to be social injustices and which try to provide readers with new insights into the way in which society works.
ACT AS WALLRAFF
in a situation like Grønland its the multiplicity of the people that makes up the society. The people are the layers of the city and each and one of them has a different view on whats the problem, the solution, the joy and the glue that makes this multiplicity work. Mr. Sluik suggesteted to do like Wallraff, construct new identities, act them out and with this try to see the area from different angels, find out what distances and links this different personas in the cityscape.
So, what are the different identities I should be, how can I put myself in their situation, how to become another person for a day…

onsdag 14. april 2010

free software

Free software is not only about the liberty to download it, use it and misuse it in any way you like, but is also about, the softwares freedom to grow, to multiply and to improve, regardless of where it resources itself from. Its the idea that its developed through a voluntarilly production; "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need".

simple forms


Simple forms do not necessarily lead to a clearer, simplified life.

on information


The aphorism "information wants to be free" has become a battle cry of resistance against information controls. A variety of interpretations provide useful insights into what constitutes this "freedom" in the information age. For designers of responsive systems regulating control and freedom in their designs remains a critical problem. How open should a system be? What role should public participation play in its instantion? How does the design engage public space? Who operationally maintains it? Who or what controls it objectives?
How to "free information" without making it just another cliche, how to define whats open and what to stay hidden. Its impossible to free all information, cause it would make our societies collaps, theres allways going to be someone whos just waiting for the right moment to misuse it. Whos to decide this?
In the cities of today it excists a microcosm wich reflects the major challenges and opportunities facing the planet today, only more intensified.
In the city, all man-made systems intersect, interact and interconnect with one another- forming a complex system of systems.

tirsdag 13. april 2010

playground/interplay


Ive been struggling with the word PLAYGROUND ever since it was given to me a couple of days ago, the definition of the word is a place with a specific design for children be able to play there. It may be indoors but is typically outdoors (where it may be called a tot lot in some regions). I know the word is a noun, meaning recreation area, and that its synonym is jungle gym...
I understand why this word was given to me but I think its an inapropriate word to use in this manner; I hereby choose to redefine it; what they really wanted to say and the word they wanted to use was; INTERPLAY, but the problem is that this word means INTERACTION, one of the other words that was also given to me, this makes the cycle complete, Ive been given two synonyms to work with... The word interplay is also a noun but the use is more accurate than playground, its synonyms are: coaction, exchange, give-and-take, mesh, meshing, networking, reciprocation, reciprocity, team play, teamwork, tit for tat, transaction...

completition


Architects tend to design a "finished" building that once its completed starts to impair itself. Landscape Architects creates a premise or a process- they design a system, something that starts when they leave it, ie. starts to develop itself on its own terms and thus frees itself from the intended. This can be achived in architecture as well if one emphasized the quality of underspecification. The notion of an architecture as a system with underspecified goals suggests an architecture that evolves and therfore is never complete, like nature itself. This will break down the distinction between a building and its environment; it presupposes that a building creates an environment and carries on creating an environment as it attempts to specify itself.
The architecture then cant help but be ecological in the sense that the input sources and output sources become part of the same architectural system, it reflects the innovation, replenishment and reconstruction. Like landscape architects design with ephemeral materials like plants, wood, water, iron etc, the architect may emphasize the ephemerality of architectural constructions and help counteract the usual architectural obsession with permanence...

WHY QUOTE?


Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.
Guy Debord, Panegyric,1989

FLOSS


Free, Libre, Open Source Software, FLOSS, is software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. The Free Software Definition states that the free software contains the following freedoms:
-The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)
-The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
-The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2)
-The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Why is this relevant to my diploma? If we look at the rules of FLOSS and transfer them to abstract architectural principles, we see that a number of attempts have been made since the 70s to transfer such principles to the making of objects. In architecture the drawings and ether data is to be considered the "source" and therefore its important to open up the idea of the design process. The design will then reflect on the idea that; we want to see what happens if we work otherwise. The design will arise from the participation and configuration of those create and implement it. The aesthetics will be organization and not of form. An arisng problem with this thinking is the fact that it enables anyone to be a co-designer, but this does not mean that everyone will undertake to participate in this process. But, the system encourages people themselves to create their own spaces and collaboratively build a social space. It becomes an architecture that is produced through an open process that is never finished, there is no difference between the process, the design and the inhabitation.

mandag 12. april 2010

CCTV



Whats left of privacy is what you do in your own house, all your physical movements outside your private sphere is being collected and stored for 6 months...

Theres more than 1000 CCTV installations on the streets in the downtown Oslo area, in the area surrounding the train station its 397 cameras alone.
Whats the need for this? Crimerates are still the same, a camera cant change human behaviour in public places, Is it a senseless deprivatory of personal freedom or does it really have an effect on our behaviour?

Picture from the article in the Lov & Data: The figure shows the density of surveillance cameras in public areas in Oslo: one to five cameras is marked yellow, with six to ten cameras, orange, and with more than ten cameras red. Unmarked areas are either free of cameras or were not investigated. Air Image copyright Digital Globe and Google 2009; colored overlay copyright Hans E Pless / UMB 2009
Nrk
TheBigBrotherState

Khat


Over 1000 somalians are considered users of the drug Khat in Oslo.
Due to integration failure in Norway these people who came to the country in order to get away from a war situation ended up in limbo, without job, education and knowledge of the society theyre now a part of they resolve to wander around in the streets looking for stimulation. In the streets of Grønland, this slightly psychostimulating drug is distributed in the open.
Aftenposten

MAPPING




R.Justin Stewart, Artinstallation2008, mapping the Transit System from 2am-2pm.
A 3dimensional mapping system.

Chaos Theory


Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, physics, and philosophy studying the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behaviour is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.
Wikipedia
Picture above, exploding steam pipe, lower manhattan2009

HUMAN BEING


Hanah Arendt understands "human being" as a being among humans, that is, as A BEING IN PUBLIC.

POLIS



The public realm of the Greek polis was bound neither to a specific place nor building. It could be anywhere within the polis, between private households and was characterized by antagonism rather than conformism. It was a "space of difference" held together in the middle by that common to all; a field of competition where the "fiercly agonal spirit" of each citizen was focused on the public good rather than private interests. Without the things in the middle, "wordlessness" would spread between them, and the world would be reduced to a mere sea of senselessly moving matter. In that case it would be like two people sitting opposite each other, "no longer seperated but also...entirely unrelated to each other by any thing tangible".