Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/ Crit Arch I

September 26th 2012.

Reflection on My First Review.

Quite frankly, at the beginning of this assignment I was not certain of the verbs I wanted to pick out of the list and how I should interpret my verbs correctly.

My first model reached its height with my interpretation of the verb to gather. To gather how, was an important question. I thought about the actual meaning of the verb and tried to attach an image to it in my head. People today do not, in a sense, gather. The meaning of the verb has lost some value over the years. So I then thought about ancient civilizations. I was inspired by their desire to reach their Gods by elevating their structures to an unimaginable height for their time period.

The deformed paper took a different meaning, becoming “to gather by lifting.” The construction of my first model started with a set of ordinations A, B, and C. A being a point on the edge of the paper; B being one of the original points; and C the central, the gathering point. The distance between A and B determined the height of the triangle, and the distance between B and C determined the base of a triangle. At the end, I had multiple triangles that had to meet at a single point or area.

For my second model “To Join by Pairing,” I paired the different trials together, and connected them with lines. I didn't have a concise system per say as the first one. I constructed a very literal version of my drawing. I experimented with the different “line-weights” by relating them to the distance between the viewer’s eyes and the model. The different thicknesses translated into the distance between the lines and the dimensions of the triangles. The darker lines are closer to the eye and the lightest on ground level.

In a nutshell, my professor loved the simplicity of my models; however, the other critic would have liked to have seen more intensity in the models. The most important feedback I got from my panel was not shy away from work, to start with the hardest ones first, and to work faster, that way I’ll forget about precision.

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/ Crit Arch I

September 24^th 2012.

Robert Smithson; A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey.

“But the suburbs exist without a rational past and without the “big events” of history. … but no past-just what passes for a future.” writes Robert Smithson. In his essay, A tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey, Smithson devalues the modernization of the suburb of Passaic. In saying this, he emphasizes the value of the past by relating a bridge, pipes, a fountain, a sand box, and a map to monuments. What are monuments?  Events, structures, statues of political figures, notable examples.

Why are “dumps” so important to Robert Smithson? Most of his artworks are related to entropy, meaning change, how time and humans affect earth. Smithson is not interested in the beauty of nature but the “ruins” built around and in it. In A Tour of the Monument of New Jersey, he discusses how the structures and materials used today are affecting our future, in fact, he continues his discussion by saying: “Passaic seems full of holes compared to New York City,… and those holes in a sense are monumental vacancies that define, without trying, the memory traces of an abandoned set of future.” By building more structures that does not resemble the ones built in the past, we are without a doubt erasing a future.

In his essay, Smithson mentions a lot of monuments that he stepped upon while “traveling” the Passaic. The monuments have many things in common, like the fact that are all situated in the Passaic, but one similarity steps out form the others, a time frame. Time in a sense is represented in some way in all of the mentioned monuments. He talks about eternity and its irreversibility by using a jejeune experiment for proving entropy. “We take a child and have him run hundreds of time clockwise in the box (sand box full of separated black and white sand) until the sand gets mixed and begins to turn grey; after that we have him running anti-clockwise but the result will not be a restoration of the original division but a greater degree of greyness and an increase in entropy.” We, human beings cannot replace the past; we cannot erase what we have already done. None of us has invented a time machine yet or at least made it public to the world. He convinced the future is lost somewhere in the non-historical places, like the Passaic. The small areas, reminding him of the past are monuments to him, they’re monumental, and they’re in a sense Rome.

In some areas, I agree with Smithson’s arguments, day by day, we devalue valuable ground set rules our ancestors set for us. Day by bay we step further away from ourselves and neighbors by only caring about ourselves. We’re stepping further away from the society that got us here. We’re stepping further away from our future. This might be it; we may no longer see a tomorrow. We are in trouble!

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/Crit Arch I

September 17^th 2012

Robert Smithson's close reading, Group in-class assignment 

• The future is emphasized quite a bit i his essay
• He mixes time and ideas together. 
• He's big on the use of long lasting materials, materials that were used in the past.
• Some artists see an infinite number of movies. Why? Time is compressed or stopped inside the movie size? Maybe, it is because movies are not real, Never really happens in real life unless it is a documentary. And, this is a facet, artists partially like the real world. Their creativity allows them to see the real world. 
• Movies are entropic? With time, a movie's style and quality image improves. 
• The contamination is overly used.
• Smithson is not really interested in the beauty of earth, more so, he's interested in the change it has gone through. For example, fertile land becoming  a desert. 

Dear Bloggers,

 Sorry for not posting a single word about my architecture life in the past few days. It's hectic, sad, full of disappointments,and breakdowns on top my school's roof or the second floor's bathroom. Let's just put it this way, last night I only slept for 2 hours, and that's a lot. Some of my classmates didn't sleep at all until our English class this morning. I have to end this short response to why I haven't posted in a while. I have work to do; probably won't sleep tonight!!! So, Take care!!!

This is what I listen to in studio, you'll probably like it to.

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/Crit Arch I

September 17^th 2012

Robert Smithson, “Energy is more easily lost than obtained.”

“Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget about the future”, stated Robert Smithson. In his essay, Entropy and the new monuments, Smithson emphasizes time, values, solidity, and change. From my interpretation of his essay, time comes with change, values are no longer applicable, and solidity determines age.

            He mentioned plastic and other materials, artists were using today were against the ages. In other words, we are destroying the environment. Technology and greed has not allowed us to be “sub-monumental.”  None of us would prefer to turn gold into cement, we would have liked the opposite which aligns with one of Smithson’s concept, and we can’t really see the future we are stuck in the present and past.

            Where is time? What is the difference between action and reaction? What is the actual meaning of entropy to you?

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/Crit Arch I

September 5th 2012.

Richard Serra and his massive sculptors.

            “If I define and sum it up within the boundary of a definition, given my intentions, that seems to be a limitation on me and an imposition on other people of how to think of the work.” said Richard Serra in his interview with Liza Bear in the 70’s. The concept of artists noting their intentions about their work has always been contrary. Should a piece of art be more abstract or straight forward? As a visual human being and artist, I agree with Richard Serra, the slot should be left blank even though the work you produced had a lot of intentions behind it. Why? When you tell someone your intentions, you automatically set limitations, boundaries that encloses into a box. You can’t think outside of it. Frank Ghery, for example, had no intentions behind his standing accessible sculptures. He just doodled, and produced outstanding architecture.  And to relate this text with the previous one, to relate Acker’s notion of the body to Serra’s on perceptual and experiential aspects subject to chance and choice. Acker picked his location and Serra picked how many reps she wanted to do for her workouts. Both emphasized the journey there, either to a foreign land, the gym or walking through a sculpture. Why do people set deadlines, limitations, expectations, and stereotypes? 

Dear Bloggers,
 Hello!!!! I didn't accomplish anything really yesterday, I kept taking breaks to buy supplies and watching Wilfred on Netflix. Um mm? very weird show, one of my studio-mates even asked me: "What are you watching?" Today, I do not want that to happen at all so I made a schedule for myself, and I want to share it with you guys. 

10:00 a.m-11:30a.am.- Art History.
11:50-1:00p.m.- English. 
1:30-5:30-Design (4 Vellum sheets- at least an hour for each)
5:30-9:30-Design (Rhino)
10: 00-11:00- Art History (Finish Museum Drawing)
11:00-12:30- Finish ANYTHING that I did not finish. 
1:00a.m.- Time for bed which could be very, very, very nice.
7:30 a.m. Wake-up to go to English class. 

How does that sound, Hopefully I will stick to it today. So, Take care!!!

Worried

Hey fellow Bloggers, how are you guys today? Me? I'm okay for now, tired, frustrated, and worried. I miss my high school days, when I could watch tv all day on Saturdays. I miss it a lot. College life is no easy, I'm constantly stressed and I haven't had any time for myself, not even to paint my nails. It's hard to believe I officially became an architecture student  two weeks again, and I sleep really in the morning or late at night, whichever you want to call, I haven't pulled an all-nighter yet, meaning I sleep at least an hour before going to class. Insane right? To be frank, it's a Saturday Afternoon and I don't even have time to go shopping for clothes to wear on Monday, hey, I love to shop, who doesn't? Anyways I was supposed to wake up at 6 a.m. this morning to start doing work but it was raining so I decide to sleep in and I woke up at 11a.m. so now I'm five hours behind my schedule and huh? I don't know what's going to happen? So, take care!!!

Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.  ~Author Unknown

First English Assignment

Bayyinah C. Pierre
Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/Crit Arch I

September 5^th 2012.

Spoken Language in My Studio Space.

What is my bodily experience in studio? To be honest, studio becomes my second world. It separates itself from the real world. It is the foreign land I visit when I need to get my work done, the territory I realize I want to become something. It is a place where I ask myself a lot of questions, mainly when my brain needs a rest from the word accuracy.  It is the domicile I occupy when I am not in my small room on campus.

The ten minute walk to Higgins has long been my planner, the walk I remind myself what I need to do for the day. I have without a doubt walked that walk so many times. Approximately thirty times, but I have never added up the number of times I strolled through Dekalb to Lafayette. I would be interesting the take note of it, I going to try to do it every day. But I’ll forget, just like Acker forgets to write about her experiences in the gym, I will probably forget to mark down every single walk.

How amazing would it be to find out I walked from my dormitory to Higgins Hall a thousand times, at the end of my freshman year? That really awesome and cool to me, however I don’t want to have to set myself out for failure, just like Acker failed to write her experiences, hmm?, just like I failed to learn how to whistle this summer.  I still can’t make a sound when I blow air out of my mouth, quite tragic.

Acker, in her writing, talks about her commencing to learn about a new language, just before understanding, you begin to forget your own. She talks about the gym becoming a foreign country to her, but a foreign country I which she has to learn the language to familiarize herself more.  I admire the way Acker described the gym has a foreign country, in this past couple of weeks studio has become more or less a foreign soil. How? In a sense, my journey to get to the studio tricks into thinking it is actually further away than what it really is. Another reason might lie in the fact that people know where to find me if I am not in my dorm-if I’m not in Paris, I’m in Spain! You travel to an unknown land to explore, to learn or maybe, to remember why you call your home, home.

Repetitiveness, ah, the word receptiveness, Acker mentions repeating the same controlled gestures with the same weights, the same reps, and the same breath pattern, but one day something happened she couldn’t manage the last rep of her normal warm-up which she had been doing for a while now. She hadn’t changed anything about her daily routine but the weather did and her unexpected failure at the sixth rep was allowing to see inside her body to its workings. In my studio, I go through a lot of receptiveness in the studio. I have to do a drawing over and over again until I decide which has perfect line weight and which one is very neat. I don’t want if one day, I won’t be able to pick up my lead holder. That’s what life is about? You never know when you are going to be able to do something that you have done a lot before.

After reading this passage, I have reminded myself of why I am here in studio, writing this essay, why I want to be here, and how I should appreciate more the things I do that others are not able to accomplish themselves.  I think everyone should read this book, not just read and soak in the context that’s in in black and white in front of you, but their own meaning to the passage, how it relates to their lives.  

Hi, my full name is Bayyinah Christina and I will posting on this blog daily. It'll become my dairy and folder for my assignments. You will learn more and more about me each. So take care!!!