The Metropolis of Me: New Narratives of Urban Interface (Thursday 7/14/11)

07/14/11, (6:00-7:30 pm): The Tateuchi Democracy Forum (JANM)

•  Moderators:  Tim Durfee and Ben Hooker, Graduate Media Design Program (MDP), Art Center College of Design

•  Computers, cameras, geolocators, and sensors - as well as human texters, micro-bloggers, and social networkers - are producing customizable virtual cities spatially and informationally coincident with our old ones. This symposium’s guests will examine the nature of this new type of urban existence. One of elective, searchable, design-able coincidence.

Sputniko! Born between an English mother and a Japanese father who are Mathematics professors, Sputniko! graduated high school early to study Mathematics at Imperial College, London. As she pursued her studies in Science, she grew interested in arts which allowed her science thinking to become more communicative and flexible, leading her to study for an MA at Royal College of Art, London. While at RCA, [Open_Sailing], a project in collaboration with Cesar Harada, received [the next idea] award at the international media arts festival Ars Electronica. Sputniko! creates machines, films and music exploring the intersections of technology, feminism and pop culture. Her narrative works are produced via research investigation with scientists and specialists to critically investigate a possible future of human and technology. In 2010, after her graduation from RCA, Sputniko!’s works were exhibited at the Contemporary Museum of Art, Tokyo. In Summer 2011, she will exhibit her works at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Keiichi Matsuda. Keiichi Matsuda (BSc. MArch) is a designer and film-maker. He began working with video during his Masters of Architecture at the Bartlett school (UCL) as a critical tool to understand, construct and represent space. Keiichi's research examines the implications of emerging technologies for human perception and the built environment, focusing on the integration of media into everyday life. He has a multi-disciplinary approach to his work, using a mixture of video, motion graphics, interaction design, and architecture to create vibrant "hyper-real" environments where the distinctions between physical and virtual start to dissolve. He has presented his films and research internationally, winning awards for design, drawing and filmmaking, and graduated from his MArch with distinction in summer 2010. He is currently self employed, working on commissions and research projects in London and Tokyo.

Jon Rafman (via Skype). Jon Rafman is an artist, filmmaker, and essayist. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Literature from McGill University and a M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His films and new media work have gained international attention and have been exhibited at Slamdance Film, Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, and the New Museum in NYC. Rafman's Nine Eyes of Google Street View project has been featured in Modern Painter, Der Speigel, Libération, New York Times, and Harper's Magazine.

DIRECTORS’ SYMPOSIUM (Thursday 7/14/11)

THURSDAY 7.14  5pm - 6pm

Join the directors of leading, globally renowned LA schools of architecture in an exciting dialog addressing new inter-relationships and future trajectories of architectural education, practice and global metropolitan life.

Presented by Hitoshi Abe, Qingyan Ma, Ming Fun, Andrew Zago.

Your Body is a City (Friday 7/15/11)

07/15/11, (6:00-7:30 pm): The Tateuchi Democracy Forum (JANM)

 • This symposium features Japanese critic, Hiroki Azuma, author of Otaku: Database Animals, presenting recent work on urbanism, technology and embodiment, in simultaneous Japanese/English translation, and also in conversation with Benjamin H. Bratton.

•  Cities, we presume, are defined by density: social density, economic density, and the density bodies (of multiple species) interweaving and reproducing in close quarters.  Jungles too are defined by density, but cities, despite the  cliché, are less like jungles than they are like the bodies that inhabit them. These bodies (us) in turn are megacities built of blood, neurons, miles of nerve tissue, marrow, microbes, organs and cavities, multiple internal and external layers of skin. 

•  What kinds of bodies do we see at Little Tokyo Design Week? What cities for what bodies, what bodies for what cities: what design? The body of Los Angeles is defined by its openness, by its irregularity, by its illegible explicitness. It is a coastal parking lot. The body of Tokyo is defined by its closures, by compossiblity, by its comprehensiveness. It is, after Hiroki Azuma, an animal database. 

•  This symposium will present a collection of perspectives on urbanity/embodiment--programs, philosophy, poetics--and sketch a new zoology for our machine ecologies of flesh and form. 

Hiroki Azuma is one of the most influential young literary critics in Japan, focusing on literature and on the idea of individual liberty in an age of ubiquitous information. He is the author of several works including, Otaku: Database Animals, University of Minnesota Press, 2009

Benjamin H. Bratton is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, and Director of the Center for Design & Geopolitics at the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology.

Ultra Exposure (Saturday 7/16/11)

07/16/11, (5:00-6:30 pm): The Tateuchi Democracy Forum (JANM)

•  Moderator:  Sylvia Lavin, Chair of the Ph.D. in Architecture program and Professor of Architectural History and Theory at UCLA

 •  Ultra Exposure will bring together an international roster of speakers to explore the continued relevance of the 1970 Osaka Expo for thinking about the future city and the potential of design and technology to instigate positive change.  Lectures and panels will discuss the interactions between experimental architecture and new media technologies and reveal their role in shaping our interactions with the urban environment. The symposium will feature architects and artists who participated in the original expo, historians and theorists concerned with our understanding of how seemingly fleeting spectacles - like the fantastical architecture of world’s fairs, the seductions of new gadgets and the euphoria of imagining future utopias - determine the expectations we make of the present in both significant and enduring ways.  The symposium will conclude with contemporary designers who continue to explore the intersections of architecture, media and the development of global culture.   

Golden Astroboy Award Ceremony (sunday 7/17/11)

 

07/17/11: Noguchi Plaza, Japanese American Community and Cultural Center (JACCC)

• With the permission of the office of Osamu Tezuka (legendary manga artist and creator of “Astro Boy”), there will be a “Golden Astro Boy” award trophy awarded to the best designer installation, inspired by similar awards such as the “Golden Lion” awarded at the Venice Biennale. This contest will be judged by a jury of important LA community members, architects, designers, artists, and guest critics from LA and Japan.

Environment in the Future City (Sunday 7/17/11)

07/17/11, (3:00-5:00 pm): East West Players

•  Moderator:  Joe Day, Faculty, Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Christopher Hawthorne (L.A. Times), Sou Fujimoto, Neil Denari, Masataka Baba, Hirata Akihisa and Lisa Iwamoto.

•  A symposium exploring the culmination of Tokyo/LA Houses Container exhibit that speculates beyond the Future City with several prominent guest architects and critics. Prior to the symposium, there will be a “Golden Astro Boy” award trophy awarded to the best designer installation.