SPINterviewed by Z: my 15 seconds of fame

What inspired your written project?

I’m sill developing a writing style, and it was fun to play around with elements from both Frazier and Whitehead. Also, using digits instead of numbers written out (13 vs. thirteen) was an homage to Auster’s City of Glass. I wanted to paint a picture of a whole little world, similar to Ian Frazier’s essay “Canal Street.” You see all these different people but they are just in the background until an insider creates a moving picture of a location. Like Frazier regarding his immediate neighbors, I wanted to share a little background information on some people on my block, mixed with a little Whitehead flare- we are all experiencing the same things, why don’t we know each other? The way that people responded to the fire made us feel like maybe people DO care—kind of like Daniel Quinn in City of Glass.

Why did you decide to make a video?

As an aspiring film editor, I thought it would be great to play around with editing all these little Manhattan moments into one larger one, as all these small events are occurring at the same time. Yi-Fu Tuan discusses writers and artists evoking a sense of place more accurately than anyone. I guess I was trying to be an artist and portray MY New York.

What program did you use to edit the video?

Final Cut Pro

Where can I find the video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpHx5qH4Ls4

or

http://www.placestudies.com/blog/a-manhattan-moment

Where did you get the footage for the video?

I decided I wanted to use “found “ footage instead of shooting a whole new project so that it would be more organic. I used videos from my Sony Cybershot digital camera as well as some footage from my class in Tisch Open Arts – Fundamentals of Filmmaking 1. Since I’ve only had my current computer since late June 2008, the videos are pretty representative of my final year in Gallatin. I only used footage from Manhattan, but you see everything from Rockefeller Center to my house in Chelsea to Tompkins Square Park and the East River. It is certainly not a portrait of all of Manhattan, or even all of my Manhattan, but I feel that it evokes a sense of MY MANHATTAN, the feeling of my life here in some way. Or maybe in more than one way. I was hoping for it to be a cohesive montage.

Why did you use such a long Pearl Jam clip at the end?

Last summer my old friend Zack Newman followed Pearl Jam’s east coast tour for SPIN Magazine. I joined him for the Madison Square Garden shows. When Eddie Vedder began to sing “Better Man,” the energy and voices of the crowd overpowered him to the extent that he messed up the words and asking, “With your permission…” started the song from the beginning. It was a very powerful moment for me, and I felt that it best captured thousands of New Yorkers coming together in one common mindset, even for only a few too-short minutes. Click here for my embarassing video commentary shortly after the concert.

Pearl Jam @ MSG

So Matt, Where did the inspiration for this project come from?

A lot of the inspiration for my blog posts came from experiences and endeavors that occurred in my apartment in the past year. Its the first apartment I've ever lived in on my own, so it I feel it will always hold a special type of resonance in my heart. I wanted to do a project that captured my so called life and times within this madhouse that I call home, and one that was influenced by my experience in the "Sense of Place" course. Why do you choose to do a movie, and what type of effects where you using to distort the images within the video?

First and foremost we have an amazing video camera in my apartment at all times and it just felt right to use it as a way to capture place and time. Also, because we are all moving out of the apartment in a couple weeks, my roommates and I wanted to capture some last footage of the apartment to put in the archives of our lives. In class this semester the videos always helped me to put a visual perspective on place, and so I wanted to create a moving image in honor of all the random clips and footage that helped make the class what is was. The project was filmed and then imported into final cut pro, a quite complex and overwhelming editing system used in the production of almost any professional shooting whether TV or movies. In post production my friend Jay and I set out to match cuts from the footage with the rhythm of the song "Cosmic Charlie" by the Grateful Dead. We had about two hours of footage to get through and we ended up with about a four minute and thirty second video. The video seems quite distorted in a lot of areas and this is by no means a mistake. The distortion of the video is meant to mirror my twisted sense of reality as well as to invoke the ideas of some of the last books the class read this semester. We played with the notion of time by speeding up the frames per second, and then used blurring techniques to give it an even stranger feel. How did you learn to dance so brilliantly?

Years upon years of watching music videos on MTV. I also think it comes kind of naturally to me in the moment. I don't let the camera affect my dancing; for me its more about spirituality than anything else-connecting with ancient mystical spirits floating in the stratosphere. Now that the weather is getting better do you actually plan on stepping outside of your apartment into the greater world beyond?

The last few months of my life I have steadily grown crazier by being forced to live indoors. This insanity has shaped the projects and writings I have done throughout the semester whether in a positive or negative light. But yes sadly enough there is a world beyond the doors of my apartment and I plan on investigating it in this springtime glory.

Why an essay?

The contemporary world is full of cynical criticism. I tend to feel the need to defend persons, companies, industries, etc. that are constantly slandered by intellectual society. There seems to be some sort of gratification in contradicting the theorists conspiracy that these people are out to get them. To the theorists the world is still only in black and white; for me, I try to see it in Technicolor, it’s more interesting. I was spurred early on to challenge Kunstler the best I could. I attempted to do it in the first essay by placing a personal image of my family onto the car industry. Now I am trying to validate Disney. I chose the essay format because I feel it is the most assertive way to get the point across. The only other format applicable would have been a video, but it is too late to video record the passage of history of the New Amsterdam theatre on 42nd Street.

Why defend the Mouse?

I was always struck by the term ‘Disneyfication’ when talking about Times Square. I understand the term is used to articulate the artificial nature of the district. But that in turn suggests that Disney itself is entirely artificial, and I am not sure that I agree. Yes, Disney is hugely based in the fabrication of world cultures. But would it have survived as long as it has without having some truth behind all of the fakeness?

I’ll admit, I am not a fan of the commercialized tourist culture. But I wouldn’t want to blame it on one company. It is just as much my fault that Times Square is what is, because I’ve supported the NYC tourist culture many a times visiting the wax museum, playing at Dave & Buster’s, shopping at the Hershey store, etc. Who am I to blame? It wasn’t as if I was boycotting it.

My first instinct was to analyze the Disney theme park phenomenon. But that topic has been discussed from front to back, so I was looking for a new direction. The history of the New Amsterdam Theatre has always fascinated me, particularly its history with the Follies. Plus I had completed an internship with the theatrical division of Disney last year, so discussing the company from a theatre industry perspective was the obvious choice.

Lately I have also been completing some freelance work for the company in their offices located in the New Amsterdam theatre. Previously when I worked for them, the headquarters were in a standard New York office space located in a building a few blocks away. Having the offices separate from the theatres themselves gave a peculiar dynamic that separated the business from the art. However their lease expired this past fall, and they moved locations into the former nightclub above the New Amsterdam’s mainstage. The dynamic of the office has completely changed. The art and the business are located within in one structure, and the architects of the new space have made this apparent in the design. Parts of Ziegfeld’s nightclub have been adapted into the office’s layout, including the glass runway, which now leads into the President’s office, and the proscenium arch, which towers over the employees. While working late in the new offices one night, I could overhear the audience’s enthusiastic reactions to Mary Poppins in the background. There was this sense of fulfillment in the work that I was doing, something that could never be achieved in the old office space. Later that night as I was exiting the theatre at the 42nd Street entrance, it suddenly dawned on me how drastically different Disney’s role in New York has been compared to the other developments. It has not been about creating false nostalgic experiences. It has been about creating something uniquely New York.

Further Thoughts:

There is a ghost that haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre. Her name is Olive Thomas. Learn her story by listening to this podcast:

http://www.playbillradio.com/podcast/podcast.html?item_id=1145

For more information on Disney on Broadway visit:

http://www.disneyonbroadway.com

Q: Wow, Eliza you have great style! Do you really only shop at bargain stores, like your book suggests?

A: Oh thank you, you’re so sweet. I really do only shop for bargains. I cannot afford anything else, believe it or not. I know I look fantastic but that’s because I have a great eye for bargains and I know where to shop. With my book you’ll be able to do just this.

Q: I heard that you used Yi Fu Tuan’s, Space and Place as inspiration. How did you do this?

A: Well Yi Fu Tuan and I are great friends and I truly admire him. I used his ideas of how we create a place from a space. A place is a pause, it answers certain social needs, and is a repository of memories and dreams . I wanted to show readers how to turn a space, like a clothing store, into their own place. He says, “An object or place achieves concrete reality when our experience of it is total, that is, through all the sense as well as with the active and reflective mind. “ I wanted to show my readers how to achieve this experience and create ant intimate place.

Q: Where did you get the inspiration to create this book?

A: I always shop for inexpensive clothing and I felt that now was a great time for other people to learn this art. Also I was shopping with my sister, searching for bargains of course, and she was so overwhelmed and stressed. That’s when I realized this is a major problem that must be addressed. People should not feel stressed while shopping. Shopping is a leisurely activity; therefore people should feel at ease and at home, just like I do.

Q: What is your favorite store that you discussed in your book?

A: That’s such a tough question! If I had to choose I would say Buffalo Exchange. I find really great things for me every time I shop there. However, I really love all the shops.

Q: Did you enjoy writing this book?

A: Of course I did. I love shopping and if I can help people love it as much as me, I’m happy.

Q: Will you continue writing books like this one?

A: Although I thoroughly enjoyed writing this, I think I want to move onto something different. Perhaps a book of creative short stories. I’m still unsure. I do know, however, that I will always continue my search for great thrift stores.

In this week's LiteratureBeat, we talk to NYU Sociology student Edward Morec. His new piece "Objectifying New York" was just published on PlaceStudies.com and it chronicles a sort-of scavenger hunt he did around NY inspired by Paul Auster's City of Glass. We caught up with him at an empanada stand in Alphabet City.

LiteratureBeat: What was the creative genesis of this project?

Edward Morec: Well, I read City of Glass, and I read Ian Frazier's collection, and I kind of wanted to find a way to interact with the city instead of just describing it. [takes bite of empanada] Finding or buying random items seemed to be a convenient and interesting way of doing so.

LB: How did you choose the route that you took?

EM: Well, first I was going to go to all 5 boroughs in one day and collect items. Then, I got sick and didn't think I was up to that and decided to go from the top of the Bronx to the bottom of Staten Island as a...[chewing]..sort of North/South axis exploration. Then, it ended up taking so long that I just settled with making it to Staten's North Shore and turning around.

LB: How did the books you've read recently influence the style of your post?

EM: None, everything was totally original! [laughs] The matter-of-fact style of Frazier and the sort of stream-of-consciousness feel of Colson Whitehead were definitely influencing me while writing. Since the physical project was about getting random objects, it made sense to string together a bunch of loosely connected observations in my prose.

LB: In the section on Chinatown, you mention there's a good story about a statue?

EM: Yeah, the statue of Lin Zexu. This is a story I first heard on an NYU sponsored tour of Chinatown, actually. General Zexu fought the, uh, hang on [buys Snapple]...um, during the Opium Wars, he resisted the British and became a local hero to the Fujianese. So, when the Fujianese [Editor's note; Fujianese people are from Fujian Province in China which is next to Guang Dong Province and near Hong Kong, the traditional sources of Chinese immigration to New York] started arriving on East Broadway in the 80s and 90s, the city was worried that they were mixed up in drug trafficking. [takes a drink] Giuliani's administration sponsored the construction of the state as an anti-drug message and set it facing East Broadway with the inscription "Hero in the War on Drugs." So it's kind of a celebration of the Fujianese, but also a quasi racist PSA. Plus the Fujianese turned out to be less likely to be drug dealers than the Cantonese.

LB: Oh Giuliani, those were the days. From your writing it seemed you know Chinatown pretty well.

EM: Yeah, I lived at NYU's Lafayette dorm for two years. I guess I wanted to contrast my new discoveries with an area that I knew well. It was also where I planned ahead what I was going to acquire. I really like the area and choose Lafayette. That's when I started taking Cantonese and thought it would be like studying abroad or something.

LB: How did that go?

EM: Bad. [laughs] I never learned enough in class to be confident enough to order stuff in Canto or anything like that.

LB: Why was that?

EM: That's really a whole other interview....

LB: Okay. Thanks for speaking to us today

EM: Sure, you should really try the beef empanada.

IHow does your street scape achieve a "sense of place"?
Well, it doesn't look like the rest of New York and is site specific to Washington Place so it has that going for it. It's kind of park-like, with benches and bollards you can sit on, but it is clearly not an extension of Washington Square Park. I hoped that by using street furniture, I could not only identify NYU as a place, but also encourage much lacking street life. I was super into that video on public spaces and how people use them, so I put in a lot of seating and trees (not that Washington Place needs more shade).

What are those lego looking things?
Bollards to keep cars out of the bike lane. Cars in the bike lane are the worst, and I've removed all the curbside parking. I really hate cars, car culture, driving, and street parking makes it more convenient to drive so I have eliminated it. But I don't want drivers double parking in the bike lane either!

What's up with the planter boxes in the street?
The planter boxes are actually "chicanes," which are curb extensions that force cars to drive in a zig zag, slowing them down. It makes the street less attractive to speeding motorists, but still allows necessary traffic to come through.

What's up with the colorful bike lane?
Jan Gehl. Copenhagenize the planet!

Actually, why is there color everywhere?
From an aesthetic standpoint, I think urban designers take themselves too seriously. Modernist metal and sterile white street furniture does not appeal to me. But I'm not into tedious filagrees either, I like clean lines. So I used color to make the landscape more interesting. I'm in love with the street lamps in Flushing Meadows from the 1964 World's Fair, and used them as inspiration for a new streetscape. The bright colored boxes lend something whimsical, playful and postmodern to a block with intimidating buildings. The brutish Meyer Hall building, which certainly doesn't invite foot traffic off of Broadway and onto Washington Place, needs to be quelled with a counterpoint on the street.

For years I wanted to sew for a living, and I think that my obsession with colors and textures is influenced by my love for fabric.

Yeah, but you made the streetscape look like a playground/a salvia trip/Damien Hirst's dot paintings.
Thank you.

Did you really render that mini cooper?
No. I didn't render the mini cooper, the plants, the trash cans, the bicycle, or the people. I borrowed them from the 3D warehouse, which is one of the most awesome parts about sketchup. I wish I could model plants! But I did render the building facades, which I will never do again, along with everything else. I used the project as a learning experience to get better at Sketchup, which I think was successful, and I learned what I do and do not like about the program. It's really intuitive, which is great, but isn't very technical, which makes doing detailed drawings difficult.

What was the most traumatic part of this final?
You can't open newer sketchup files in older versions of the program. NYU computers only have old versions of the program, while my computer has the new one. This was problematic. In order to get the most current version of sketchup downloaded on an NYU computer so I could finish this project on a computer that could render it properly, I had to cry to the computer lab manager because they don't "do" individual updates on computer software.

Moral of the story: crying gets you through bureaucratic red tape? I should try it with the financial aid office.

What was your dream about last night?
I can't quite remember, but I do know that everything in it was Sketchup-able, so I was able to change the scale of objects and move them without effort. Also, everything turned bright blue when you touched it and you could create dotted gridlines to connect objects. It was either really cool or really anxiety inducing.

I agreed to meet with myself at a coffeeshop near both of us. When I found myself, I was drinking a cold ginger ale and flipping through my notes, as I am prone to do. I got right down to business:

Me: Why public art?
Myself: Well, for this project I knew I wanted to do something that was related in some way to design. As a student and ... hopefully as a professional ... I have primarily been doing work in urban design and planning, among many other things. I wanted to work on a project that involved intentionally designed spaces within the very unpredictable public realm. Public art exemplifies that, in that it imposes crafted design in spaces that really... have no other formal planning. Well, that's not quite right - plazas, squares, and lobbies are very high-design. But they are typically open spaces without a specific program to follow, whereas typically public art pieces have a specific agenda.

Me: That's all well and good, but really, how does the panel discussion relate to this course?
Myself: The discussion really felt like New York, if that makes any sense at all. It was essentially public, if you could afford $10, so it attracted people from all walks of life who had varying levels of interest in public art. Some were AIA members, some were just folks off the street who wanted free wine. In that sense, the conversation became typical of the New York typified in Ian Frazier’s Gone to New York. The organic nature of the public discussion reminded me of the sense of New York Frazier conveys in his book, which hinges on the unpredictable, the confrontational, and the eclectic, whether in his essay on the character of Canal Street or when the cops appear in his open door.

How does this project relate to the class?

Reading the New York stories that were the subject of the second half of the semester, I could not help but turn the lens inward and wonder what my New York story was. While discussing Colson Whitehead’s The Colossus of New York during class, we inquired as to the “colossal” nature of the city. One of the most convincing—or most thought-provoking—explanations was that New York exists as a grouping of individuals en masse, so much so that individual identities and thoughts are shared in some collective way.

I wanted to explore this a bit further. New York is simultaneously a city of natives, newcomers, and tourists—it caters to all at once, each part (Times Square and my unassuming apartment) just as “real” as the other. How did my, albeit brief, New York experience compare to that of a tourist? Where does the tourist go, and how do those patterns correspond with my own everyday tendencies? These questions led me to the bus tour. Though the photo essay does not explicitly relate to a particular reading, I think it touches on the class’ most recent and most project—to think closely about how you are situated within the city, and how your experience relates to others’.

Do you think your project successfully comments on the difference between your own experience and the tourist experience?

I deliberately left this a bit ambiguous. I found it surprisingly easy to “act” like a tourist—here is more confirmation that you can buy a new identity quite easily. I originally intended to offer a harsher criticism of the tourist culture, but because I shifted so easily into that role I thought another sort of implicit commentary was more appropriate: the line between the tourist and the resident is not always clearly defined. That, in fact, is a “colossal” aspect of New York. Anyone can be anyone at any time, whether by choice or by accident.

How was this map created? Explain your process

I began with a map of my neighborhood acquired from satellite images. I then traced all the possible routes from my house to school that would logically be taken. I overlaid the four routes that I take most often highlighting certain stops (attractors) along the way. Using control point curves I retraced the common routes to provide averaged lines--breaking free of the grid and seeing the paths only in relation to one another. I turned the two dimensional lines into three-dimensional tunnels to allow for more calibration. The shape and diameter of the tunnels are based on information about each attractor. The shape of the attractor is defined by its popularity and convenience. The shape of the attractor is blended with the shape of the initial position to create the overall shape of the path. The immediate area around the attractors is more intense and fades as the distance from them increases. The diagrams show perspective sections and elevations, details of the area around attractors, and some global visualization tools for conveying position.

Why have typical city maps failed to embrace the complexity of urbanism?

Why did you choose the act of dusting as the subject of your essay?

When I woke up on a recent morning with a hangover, I was genuinely surprised by the intensity of my urge to clean, to order my life and impose control in some way. This, to me, was representative of the larger instinct to make a place, and to maintain and protect it against the inevitable entropy that dissolves everything eventually. I think the amount of time we spend merely maintaining our lives–rebuilding the sand castle, essentially–is pretty remarkable, as is the automatic, almost robotic quality of this maintenance. There is a lot of life being lived as we brush our teeth, wash the dishes, or dust the shelves, but we rarely see anything special in these tasks.

I chose dusting in particular because I couldn’t think of any task that was more mundane. It’s something we do as quickly as we can, with our minds occupied by other things, so we’re unlikely to absorb much of the experience. And yet when I dusted the shelf where I keep all my random odds and ends, it forced me to interact with aspects of my life that I had long neglected, to bring awareness to these things and begin to contemplate connections between them. The act of dusting served the same purpose, for me, that Tuan attributes to good literature, which “…draws attention to aspects of experience that we may otherwise fail to notice” (162).