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A couple of days ago, I came across a new article about how a bishop in England had come up with ‘10 Commandments of AI’. They are as follows.

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AI should be designed for all, and benefit humanity.

AI should operate on principles of transparency and fairness, and be well signposted.

AI should not be used to transgress the data rights and privacy of individuals, families, or communities.

The application of AI should be to reduce inequality of wealth, health, and opportunity.

AI should not be used for criminal intent, nor to subvert the values of our democracy, nor truth, nor courtesy in public discourse.

The primary purpose of AI should be to enhance and augment, rather than replace, human labour and creativity.

All citizens have the right to be adequately educated to flourish mentally, emotionally, and economically in a digital and artificially intelligent world.

AI should never be developed or deployed separately from consideration of the ethical consequences of its applications.

The autonomous power to hurt or destroy should never be vested in artificial intelligence.

Governments should ensure that the best research and application of AI is directed toward the most urgent problems facing humanity.

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Just as religion is/was seen as a framework of living a proper life, I find that a new cycle is emerging. What was seen as something that was artificial is beginning to develop itself and evolving to becoming an alternative reality that will start behaving through its own rights.

I find the topic of religion in relation AI very interesting because it leads to how religion effects most people. In some, it means one thing, and in another, it means something else. Its connection to us makes it so that it is individual for everyone, no matter if it means something good or bad to us. When we are starting to incorporate our own creations to something else that is often attributed to other-worldly powers, then we are allowing things such as AI to become an equal to us. It may not be biological, but it is ‘alive’ in its own right.

Just like a bacteria is alive and yet mechanical at the same time in its purpose, so too is AI and the future of robotics.

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Probably one of the more fun field trips I have been on, the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s library was probably the place I spent the most time at. The library itself was really interesting because it was split into a main room, but it had seperate areas for paintings and also photography. Even though I was able to see into the painting and photography rooms, the main room that I spent time in was really interesting personally, because it had lot of Japanese books on the tables. I later found out that I was lucky to see them because they were put out for a class that was coming to visit and so would have been in an archive normally.

Because of the connection to the MIA, they had a huge archive that wasn’t technically visible to the public, unless you request something before hand. I liked how the librarians were really nice and gave me a tour of the main library space and the area outside as well. The person that I spoke with, even brought out a game that the library had designed that was set up like the Clue board game but with historical figures [picture is attached below]. Of the Japanese books, I was most attracted to one by a famous Japanese artist and author that passed away in 1525.The book itself was from around 1600 and had holes going through it making interesting patters because of the bugs that had gotten to it over the years. To be able to hold something from so long ago was surreal for me because it reminds me that I’m surrounded by new things, even if their decades old.

I had never been to the MIA before and was surprised to find out that it was free to go into, and so I spent three or four hours looking through all the art and design that I could have hoped for during that evening. I forgot how much art can move me into feeling things and inspiring me to create and experience more in my own life. The renaissance paintings were to become really influential in my final project because the use of light and space would be something that I wanted to use as a connection between fractals and humanity.

This is the MIA mystery game based on the Clue board game.

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Probably one of the more interesting libraries in the Twin Cities, because of its connection to the Walker Art Museum, I was really impressed with how much information they had on so many art and design fields. Its location within the museum made me feel like I was going into a vault of knowledge, and just the space and lighting and the way everything was set up really gave me a different feeling compared to most other libraries that I have been to this far.

Although I spoke with the librarian, I was lost in the books and magazines on display and spent probably an hour or two just reading and looking at all the pictures. One of the things I enjoy most about art and design, is that I find it inspiring. Looking at those images and reading words, makes me want to create and write. It makes me inspired to know that there is literally a universe of knowledge and inspiration out there that can change the way I live my life in an instant.

What I do with my inspiration is perhaps my main issue. I feel like I’ve become so trapped with school and work, that I just don’t have time to do the things that I want to anymore. Maybe I did when I was a child, but not any more. I am curious about how I can change my life, but I think that maybe I can start making those changes once I’ve graduated. It’s sad that I feel like once I’m done my ‘education’, that I feel that I can only then start to learn about things that will help me, but perhaps, this is the reality of it. I have become more disillusioned with things recently, but there is a conscious understanding that I’m going through it, and so I know what I can, and will, do to change my life.

[mmkdesign-blog]

Recently my girlfriend spoke to me about design language and how it impacts the design profession. As a graphic designer, a former professor of hers would talk about ‘cadence’ in design, which would bother her because even as someone who is now working professionally, she never really understood why certain language was used during her time in school. The people she works for would definitely not understand a lot of the terminology she was taught, and so she has had to adapt her use of language to what the average person can understand. I think that this isn’t a bad thing at all because it allows for professionals to break out of their bubbles and permeate into the real world.

We have also spoken about this in class, and it’s definitely something that has stuck out to me since I began architecture school. Of course, there will always be words that those in the field will understand and use, but when we are in the same environment all the time, we become trapped in the same world where we can no longer talk about our work and ideas in a larger world context. This becomes dangerous for everyone because the idea of communication is to make ourselves more accessible to others, and that also includes the work that we do.

One of the words that I’ve come across in architecture school that really bothers me is ‘urbanity’. I know what it means, but would anyone else know that isn’t in architecture school or has been exposed to the field? They would probably just call it fluff. To define what it means and to make it accessible is not a hard thing to do for people that are designing for the world at large. This is not because I think that words in specialty fields are bad, but I’ve heard of many examples of the same kind of language being used in presentations to the public, where it not only confuses the public, but harms to effectiveness of the communication entirely. This goes back to how we are educated and how we are taught to communicate I think that communication is one of the most important things that we have, and its effective use can only help us become better designers.

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One of my favorite libraries in the Twin Cities is the St. Anthony Park Library by the St. Paul campus. This affection of it is more because of the things outside of the library than inside of it I’ve walked by from the St. Paul campus to the bus stop by the library many times and the walk itself is something that I’ve always had a huge love for. The park on the way, the trees, the quiet walk itself, are all things that I’ve grown to love over the last year or so since I’ve had classes in that campus. So the libary itself represents this quiet and quaint neighborhood to me. Even during the freezing cold, I’ve walked by it and its warm lighting has made it a place of comfort for me.

Because I never really had a chance to actually go inside, I felt like this was the perfect opportunity to do so. The library itself is definitely a traditional community driven one of the old fashioned ones where the local community and its needs are put above the larger interests. For example, as I was speaking to the librarian, he mentioned the various programs and services that they offered, and it stuck out to me that there was such a difference in the kind of things being offered here as compared to a library in a more urban setting. This was something that we spoke about even further because the library staff really seemed to be in tune with this difference. He even gave me a list of some of these libraries that were serving different community types, that would be interesting to look into further. 

We also spoke about the building itself. I have always been interested in the background of the building because it carries an ‘air’ of history. He told me that just last year, the library celebrated its 100th birthday. An extension was also added in the early 2000s, and is a large domed room where many of the children’s books are kept. This confirms the family orientation of the library even more because it seemed like for such a small library, almost a half of the overall book space was dedicated to children’s books. The library is in a family oriented area of the city, and seems like a middle-upper class area as well, so I’m sure it makes for a more specialized user base. We also spoke about something called the ‘library-go’ program which gives all St. Paul public school students a virtual library card so that these children can access a library without any restrictions.

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It’s okay to fail.

This is something that although I’ve heard of quite a lot over my time in architecture school. Unfortunately, this works when we have time to think about why something resulted in a certain way that wasn’t up to expectations. Our schedules do not facilitate time for experimentation and for pondering these alternative branches that we can take into a project. Iterating and creating generations of ideas and even final products (in whatever form), can lead to innovations that aren’t always possible in a streamlined process.

Perhaps my main point is that time to think about something is time well spent. It allows us to do other things and gain experience from those things and this inevitably gives us different perspectives on our lives. These different perspectives then can help us inform our future paths and discoveries. These can come from inspirations that we’ve gained or even just coming back to a project with fresh eyes and an open mind. In the following example that I’ve found, three different light bulbs are present from different times and using different technologies. These generational advancements have come over time and experimentation. The makers of the oldest type of light bulbs in the image tried to do what they could at the time, to their best ability.

I think that with school, we are told to skip these important ‘middle-steps’. Important advancements can take a lot of time to figure out and understand before being implemented. Perhaps this goes back to our educational system, but I feel like a lot of the more interesting projects that I plan on working on, will be on my own time, where I will have the luxury of time and experimentation. Of course, I’m not saying that working under deadlines is always a bad thing, but I feel like we have become overly dependent on that in education. It is through things like time where we will be able to truly expand our own endeavors, even if it means that we’ll fail a few times along the way.

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Although we are all people, there are so many things that are so different culturally that for some, it would seem like we are from different worlds. Unfortunately, this is a something that is often used to be more divisive, however, the things that are different between different people, can also be things that bring us together. There are so many potential problems that can be solved when we look at something from different perspectives and it’s really unfortunate that we sometimes forget that we are useful in a larger system where everyone plays a role.

I say these things because I found this video of someone that has gone to Malawi and is playing an instrument (a fiddle) that these children have never heard before. This sharing of culture is so interesting to me because a culture has so much to it. It is basically an entire universe in its own rights with all of the associated intricacies and subtleties that come with something that has developed over many centuries.

As has been discussed in class, ideas only expand when they are shared with someone. They are not lost. This is something that has lead to knowledge to spread the way it has. I feel like this should also be possible for culture. To share our perspectives and to bring a new perspective to others can lead to new experiences for everyone. Such as happiness in this video example. Something that can seem so ‘normal’ for us, such as a western musical instrument, can lead to a priceless feeling for others.

[mmkdesign-blog]

The coastline paradox is something that is an ever-increasingly complex shapes of a coastline, the more closely you look at it. Essentially, the more you zoom into a coastline, the more complex it gets. This means that it is technically impossible to create a perfect map, as making or drawing something like that is almost impossible at a normal map scale. This idea that the landscape is so complex in its ever increasing details that we are in an almost infinite struggle to get to a deeper understanding of the shape of the land that we occupy. So all maps we see are generalizations and averages of the overall shape that we can handle showing.

A perfect example of this is in my home province of British Columbia, Canada. There is a stretch of coastline on Vancouver Island (off of the west coast of mainland Canada) that is around 1000 km (~600 mi) in a linear (averaged) straight line, however, when the actual coastline is measured, it is around 26,000 km (~16,000 mi). This ‘actual’ distance is 10% of Canada’s entire coastline, which is an astonishingly big difference, as it goes to show how much the small turns on a coast can result in the increase in measurements.

All this is important because it reflects the ever increasing complexity of our world. Whatever way you look at it, and if you look closer, you can keep looking further and further and finding more and more. This is connected to my research on fractals and the incredible amount of information that is within them. It is so interesting to me that various systems and formulas can create such complex shapes. Where we are influenced in not only our environment (such as coastlines), but are then in turn, have our landscapes influence the way we build.

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by Stuart Redler

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After looking at Robert Irwin’s works, I have truly fallen in love with their simplicity and use of forms in space. As an architecture student, I am interested about the way space works and also how we interpret it. Irwin allows for us to fill the voids, while giving us a platform, or a formula, to do so. Perhaps this is what is most interesting to me, because I feel that there is a certain freedom to allow ourselves to fill the spaces that he creates for us. These pieces can use light and color, but they are all creating space, as much as they occupy it.

In particular, I am really in love with “Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue” (2006). Based on Barnett Neuman’s series of paintings, also named the same title, Irwin allows for humanity’s emotional and mental connection to color dictate our own perception of the environments that he creates. Newman also plays with this idea of colors and does so in large scale paintings, which in my opinion, are majestic in not only scale, but proportionality and also visual impact. Robert Irwin essentially takes these paintings, makes them highly reflective with incredibly bright visuals, and for “Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue”, creates both a ceiling and floor for us to interact with.

The idea of having art on the ground is something different to me. Although there may have been the intention of it to be walked on, I couldn’t find any image of anybody walking on the surface. Perhaps occupying this space with its ability to use opacity and transparency while being reflective, would make me feel something else, rather than just walking up to it and looking at it. I think that even though it might not be allowed, I want to be in between the ceiling and the ground.

Robert Irwin -  “Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue” (2006)

Barnett Newman - “Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III” (1967-68)

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Art has the power to move us. It can create physical, spiritual, and mental disruptions in our worlds. Vito Acconci is an example of someone that can illicit all of these reactions within us. He plays with psychological uneasiness to make us feel like we are on the edge of something disturbing. We like our comfort in life, however, this comfort is also something that we have also become reliant upon. What lives are we now living that becoming uneasy and breaking out of our comfortable lives has lead to to become like ants in a colony.

In his short video, titled ‘Three Adaptation Studies’ (1970), he sits with us face to face. He goes through three phases, that I will let you experience in the linked video below the break. Needless to say, although I am watching the video itself through a screen, the setting is uncomfortable in its face-to-face confrontational manner. It tugs at my mental well-being. Should I help this man? Where can I take him to make him feel better? Perhaps I’m used to normalcy and that something as radical as this is uncomfortable for me, and it is I that needs to break out of my shell and be comfortable with something entirely different. 

This reminds me of a bus ride that I was on a few days ago. An older lady was sat behind someone that had a mental disability. He would speak out loud, often mumbling. In his life, he is normal. This lady was obviously uncomfortable and moved further up the bus. Was this man doing anything wrong? No. But when we are confronted with something that is abnormal, we can’t help but notice it. We are forced to let it tug at our mental state. Perhaps artists like Vito Acconci allow for us to break out of our shells and look at where we are in our lives. He crashes the mental state we’re in, and question how comfortable we are.

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There is always someone behind the creation of a work of art. I recently read an article that talked about how we still respect art, design, and writings, even if they are made my someone anonymous. We always look at the pieces for what they are in front of us, for example, we don’t often know the artists themselves before their work is first in front of us. By doing so, we remove who the people are and we start to define these beings by their creations. Look at historic drawings in caves that are hundreds of thousands of years old. Our experience of them and the acknowledgement of their standing within the sphere of human achievement is undeniable.

Often these works become larger than their authors. I was moved by a story of a certain fan of Jack Kerouac that told him that they were a fan of his life work, but were not a fan of him. At what point do we remove the the maker from their work? Are we to ignore the idea and its source? I feel that ideas are already valued as being less than other things that we do. Although an idea isn’t technically an action, without the idea, there would be no action at all. I feel that this perspective of purely looking at physical things is also harmful to our understanding of the process of creation.

What I am left thinking about is that we are humans with human faults. It is who we are and who we will always be - imperfect. A master’s work may be amazing, but they are also more than their work. I do believe in the idea that we all leave a bit of our identity in everything that we make, but as another human being, I also know that the lives of these people can’t be understated. These works are but visions into their worlds- no matter who it is, and no matter what history they have created for us.

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This is a picture of an atom. One of the smallest things that we know of is visible to our eyes in this image. You can see the little point of its existence and how it is in an electric field and is laser-cooled, to keep it in place.

What amazes me the most about this image is that our world is built on so many different scales. We are astronomical in scale as well as being almost insignificant in others. How we fit into this spectrum is for us to decide as well as for external forces to help us. We can be one of the greatest humans to walk the planet, and yet in other ways, these lives can also be seen as futile. The universe has been working before us and it will continue after us.

An atom is a universal symbol that unlocks the imagination in a way similar to how space does for me. The idea of it being one of the building blocks of our world is incredible to me because we depend on it to create everything in our universe. Although this is a building block, on the other hand, it also one of the most destructive forces that we know of. When I think about its scale in relation to this thought, I am reminded of the forces in our universe that we will never truly be able to control.

When I look at this image, it amazes me that we have created such complex methods of being able to control it to even just to make it visible. Nature has been able to find a balance with so many different elements, finding perfect ratios to create the beautiful universe that surrounds us.

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A couple of days ago I was listening to music that reminded me of my past. I make sure that I never move on from what I listen to, just that I add more to what I already know. This helps me keep in touch with the feelings and memories I have with the songs that I listened to as I was going through life at a given point. Music helps me lay down markers for my life and when a song comes up randomly, memories inevitably come back to me.

This idea of memories and senses is really something that I think helps us feel more closer to who we are. We have almost infinite memories that can have occurred during our lifetimes and each of them is associated with something to do with the senses. It is important to me that I feel like I don’t lose this history of my life and so I feel that sometimes it is good to take a step back from our daily rush. It makes me think of how we lose ourselves in our own rush because we are often doing things that we would rather not. Over time, these senses get dulled.

My senses are so special to me and I feel lucky to have them. They help me experience my world and help me make more memories with each passing moment. One of the great things about art and design is that our senses are valued for what they are- an important part of the human experience. As designers, I think that engaging these important aspects of being 'us’ can help us reach further into the human condition. 

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I’ve been thinking a lot of a conversation we had in one of our classes. I think Laurel Broughton was brought up as having said that she is weirded out by the idea of the present. I think that for me, I don’t find the present weird at all, in fact, I think that the past or future are more bizarre, especially with our obsession with them. Technically the future doesn’t exist as we live in the present, however, everything we do, we do with on eye on what the result will be. It makes us hesitant and makes us question ourselves and our intuition. I think that this isn’t a good thing as it makes me feel like I should think more about why I’m thinking of doing something without trying it out. I know that for myself, this has made me stop the process of trying something new because I feel like there might be too many risks in whatever way.

What must be said though, is that the realization that there is a past, present, and a future, is one of the defining characteristics of being human. There is a realization that we have such a complicated relationship with time, often being dominated by it, but it is something that we’ve created to help us define our own place within the bigger picture of things. 

The past is something else to me. It is also weird like the future, however, we are reminded of it by artifacts within our lives. All of the objects in our world are artifacts of the lives that we have lived. These are objects of memories, which we have made ourselves. These same memories can’t even exist without us. It reminds me that although there may be something interesting about how we think about the future, it also shows that ultimately, we are hopeful creatures, always looking for a better life.

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I am so excited by space and its almost infinite potential. There is of course so much to say about it and how it can lead us all to become lost in its vastness. Having said that, I am really inspired by what it means to our sense of potential and exploration. I know that perhaps there can be a disconnect between science or mathematics and the human condition and all its subtitles, but I think that it’s important to not forget that our lives are still shaped by these larger systems. For example, coastlines as fractals, or how physics is in all of our built environment.

With stars and other universal entities colliding, I feel that there are so many potential ideas and inspiration to look towards. The reactions of these collisions and how they seem scaleable from stars and planets to particles, reflect that there can be art and design that can interpret these physical reactions to show how they can be incredibly ‘human’ in their truth. Like us, they can result in unexpected outcomes and are unpredictable.

There are lots of things that I find interesting about the concept of our relation to ‘the bigger picture’. The result of these interactions, be they particles, planets, or between two people, can create beautiful moments that can be prolonged to show their characteristics. I think forms like fractals symbolize this connection between us and the natural world through something that has an incredibly complex system behind it. I am interested in these results but I am even more interested in the spaces between the occupied spaces. What gets left out is also what defines what is there.