Fall Arts Goggle @ DMS

Arts Goggle Time Again!

Join us again at our office for the Fall Arts Goggle!
October 3, 2009 3pm-10pm (show is one night only)
The Art Show will be curated by Kerrie Conover (Fort Worth artist/photographer) as part of Fort Worth South’s Arts Goggle on Saturday, October 3, 2009.
The exhibition will feature seventeen artists:
Ray Albarez (painting), Candy Austin (Earthenware), Sharen Chatterton & Karen Rester (collaborative painting/mixed media), Michelle Connolly (photography), Kerrie Conover (installation) Alissa Garret (photography), Jessica Greene (drawing), Pete Hernandez (painting/mixed media), Kelly Hucklebridge, M.Ed. (encaustic painting), Zeena Khalaf (photography), Dr. Chantel Langlinais (photography), Lindsey Lee (photography), Joyce Martin (installation/sculpture), Lorrie McClanahan (mixed media painting), Simone Riford (sculpture), Robert Rozell (photography)
Music by:Jason Manriquez (of the Fate Lions) and DJ Eskb’n
DMS Architects, Inc., is located at 300 College Avenue, Fort Worth, Texas 76104

3-D Projections on Buildings

NuFormer is a company in the Netherlands that creates amazing, 3D projection displays on buildings. Basically they manage to sync up the projected image with the building just so, and then they can make it look the building is collapsing, like water is flooding down the roof, like ghostly lights are dancing in the windows or twirling around the columns.

And another from Urbanscreen:

555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

Interactive Architecture

Looking at the pictures from our Arts Goggle Show, the picture of the projection on our outside wall reminded me of this:
Here's a video from the Graffiti Research Lab, which states:
"Interactive Architecture is an illustration of the concept that digital projections can interact with the surfaces upon which they are projected. G.R.L. is proud to introduce Agent Watson; specializing in British ninja tactics and particle systems."

Theo Jansen - Kinetic Sculptor

Emerson reminded me of this amazing man the other day. He creates kinetic sculptures that are powered only by the wind.
"The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds."
For more information about Theo Jansen from his talk at the TED conference click HERE

Roomba

This is a long-exposure shot over 30 minutes of the path of a Roomba, the robot floor cleaner. LINK

Arts Goggle

On March 27th, 2009, DMS hosted our first art exhibition (more to come!). Curated by Kerrie Conover (Fort Worth artist/photographer) as part of Fort Worth South's Arts Goggle, the exhibition featured eleven artists: Ray Albarez, Greg Bahr, Matt Clark, Kerrie Conover, Hatziel Flores, Larry Graeber, Heidi Lingamfelter, Joyce Martin, Emerson Mayo, Orlando Ramos, Johnny Villarreal. Many of the artworks sold that night, and a great time was had by all, thanks to the cases of beer graciously donated by our friends at the Rahr Brewery. Thanks Rahr! and thanks to all those who stopped by! And we're looking forward to seeing you all at the next Arts Goggle this September.

Richard Wilson

In 2007, British artist Richard Wilson created one of the most amazing public art installations ever, using a building in the Liverpool city center:

Turning the Place Over consists of an 8 metres diameter ovoid cut from the facade of a building in Liverpool city centre and made to oscillate in three dimensions. The revolving façade rests on a specially designed giant rotator, usually used in the shipping and nuclear industries, and acts as a huge opening and closing ‘window’, offering recurrent glimpses of the interior during its constant cycle during daylight hours.

Tales from the Future

With the "future" in the film Back to the Future II only six years away, we take a look at a Modern Mechanix Magazine from 1968, which imagines "What will life be like in the year 2008?" It's pretty uncanny how close they they got: LINK

...still no flying cars however.

For more tales of the future that never was, visit Paleo-future here: LINK

Architects + Bad Websites?

I found an article in The Guardian entitled:

Why are architects' websites so badly designed?

"You have to negotiate moving maps, mystifying symbols and surprise pop-up menus. Like a highbrow version of Tomb Raider."

Oh, and he also names the guilty parties!
The good news- DMS Architects are not on the list.

My favorite of the "bad" websites is this one: LINK

You can read the entire Guardian article here: LINK

"What good is your modern architecture if it can't repair a broken heart?!"

The Columbus Egg

Italian historian and traveler Girolamo Benzoni, in his book published in 1565, Story of the New World, recounts how when Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after discovering the "New World", his cause célèbre was called into question.

Upon his return, during one of what must have been many dinner parties with the Spanish dignitaries and noblemen clamouring to hear him recount the adventure, one rather blasé Spanish noble stood up and said: 'Sir Christopher, even if your lordship had not discovered the Indies, there would have been, here in Spain, which is a country abundant with great men knowledgeable in cosmography and literature, one who would have started a similar adventure with the same result.'

Columbus, in a dignified manner, responded simply by asking that a whole egg be brought to him.

He placed the egg on the table, and said:
'My lords, I will lay a wager with any of you that you are unable to make this egg stand on its end like I will do without any kind of help or aid.'
The Spanish nobles, suckers for an after dinner party trick, passed around the egg, and without success tried to balance it on its end.
When the egg came back to Columbus he gently tapped the small end of the egg on the table, breaking in the shell slightly, and with this, stood the egg on its end.
All those in attendance were confounded.
And all those in attendance knew what he was inferring:
-that once the feat has been done, anyone can do it.

From this point forward, or at least as the story goes, the term- "The Egg of Columbus" refers to: a brilliant idea or discovery which seems easy after the fact.

And with this story as inspiration, we now open at DMS Architects- our back office.

"The Back Office" will be a depository for those discoveries, often multidisciplinary, that inspire and promote ingenious new questions, and inspire and promote ingenious new solutions, which in turn, will enhance our imagination, our production, our sensitivity, our depth, and our understanding of the many facets that contribute to the built world around us.

Granted, not all of these eggs will hatch. Some will hatch chickens. But some may lead to the discovery of a New World. And it's always easy... after you see how it's done.