a sojourner's moment

Elizabeth Alexander was hot... I mean her inauguration poem! She made comas sounded so sexy. And Mr. O was just… ohh that guy (sambil mengeleng-gelengkan kepala gue)… he just spat great words like… ehm, searching in mind for a good analogy… ehm.. still searching… like what… like… yeah… like spitting, I guess. Well the day was here. The fossilization of a sliver of history begins. A day that will go and exist on the fifth dimension, a day that will be talked by generations to come. I congratulate my American neighbors, it is a privilege for a sojourner like me to share the same time & space in their historical day.

song of life

Check out this link to Desree's Life, one my favorite song. Beautiful song, pretty woman, nice video clip. She is like Michelle Obama that can sing... :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQsOXnZsOTg

The MOD

Last week at MoMA I saw some of Giorgio de Chiricho paintings. Many art experts have studied and argued of his painting styles that border between surrealist and abstract arts. I have always liked his works because of their immediate emotional impact created by the exaggerated perspective, intense shadows, and a mood-draping color palette. One that I saw in New York is The Melancholy of Departure. That painting fits exactly into I was trying to say in the previous blog about the state of feeling in farewells.

The key feature in the painting is also the smallest element: two figures walking down a perspectively stretched road. You can barely hear the loud and noisy train in the back, but it is there. The structure of the station is elongated in all three directions. One item that perplexes everyone is the still-life banana in the foreground. It is a technique that de Chiricho used to further play the game of scale and contrast. Not everyone can comprehend the size of sky, a locomotive, or a station. But everyone knows more or less the size of a banana. With all these effects working together in the painting, it creates a sense of intense aural and emotional isolations of the two figures from the surroundings but at the same time exaggerates the closeness of them together. That is the state of feeling when you are saying goodbye to a good friend, that is … the melancholy of departure.

a perfect cold life

Today is January 16, 2008. The temperature in the morning when I came to work was around -4 Farenheit (-20 Celcius) It was one of the coldest temperature in a decade here. In cold temperature like this, the air particle is so thin and everything seems so crystal clear. In my morning walk to the office, skiddy and icy, I noticed the color of the sky was cool blue and white, almost colorless. The tree branches were amazingly still. So still unlike other days. I thought it was a perfect cold day, a perfect cold life.

notes from a lazy soul

Why learning is a pain? Why is it so painful when you are learning something new? I am trying to figure that out. It is a funny thing. I do but I still don't understand Mr. Confusius! So why then we still learn new things in our life? To grow? Maybe that's the motivation, the pain killer of learning is to imagine the possibilities, the rewards. Agh, I wish there is a better pain killer for learning.

car design

I am curious about car design recently. Can architects design cars?, ... What if. What if we treat it is an architectural problem and think about car as an ultra compact-portable house, the perfect machine for living. Ehm, isn't that what an RV does? No, not that kind of living. A normal size car. I wonder if we can produce something more critical but also visually interesting. Not just a preconceived cool form. And not necessarily a hyper-futuristic concept cars seen in many design students portfolios.

The most obvious similarity and at the same time the main contrast with architecture is in the balance between form and function. A good car design needs an intricate balance in extreme engineering and high aesthetic performance requirements. The depth of sophistication between form and function is probably beyond what we usually have to deal with. So this problem might be a good mental detour (slash) exploration. And I am sure it would be an interesting design exercise for any one.