Category Archives: Heroes

December 30, 2010 · 1:16 pm

The Phoenix Commotion

I believe I need to start a new “Heroes” category to file some posts under.

I found this guy the other day while browsing through some TED talks and was greatly encouraged not only by his use of sustainable design principles, but more so by his utilization of salvaged materials, or garbage. Perhaps this could be the outlet for which I gain validation for my obscure collections and unique accumulations.

All photos come from The Phoenix Commotion website and Flickr photo stream

Dan Phillips created The Phoenix Commotion in Huntsville, Texas as a way of proving that recycled and salvaged materials are a viable option in the construction industry. The homes they construct are impressive, especially considering the labor is provided almost exclusively by unskilled laborers and volunteers, but more impressive are the design principles and their relation to human psychology. It wasn’t until about half-way through the TED talk that I realized Dan Phillips had a remarkable perspective on building homes.

Cross-cut wood counter top

Storybook House

It seems, through his lectures and text, that the primary design parti while using salvaged materials is that pattern and texture create beauty. Bone, bottles and bottle caps, corks, broken tile, discarded tires, warped and bent lumber all can be used to create repetition and texture and therefore, according to Dan Phillips, beauty. Using simple physics lessons like “gravity pulls down” and “water runs downhill” Dan has reverted back to a more primal way of viewing home building. Fully complying with the local building code, a powerful distinction from others with similar ideals, Dan manages to construct beautiful, logical, and healthy homes for low-income owners.

My favorite application of these sustainable concepts is the natural wood banisters and the wine cork floor

Tree House

The Phoenix Commotion uses apprentice labor to keep costs down, and although there are no positions currently available, I am extremely interested in contributing my services, and hopefully learning a bit about myself and this process or looking at materials with all their potential.

What I take away from this: collecting cast-off material is fine, as long as I can use it to create pattern, repetition, texture, and beauty.

Validation

This lady helps bring validation to my guilty pleasure.

I am sure it would be an easy guess to assume that I enjoy playing video games. I don’t like to discuss them too much to bring up game references into philosophical discussions because I do not wish to be defined by the games that I enjoy playing. My wife doesn’t necessarily understand my affection for games, but she does like to see me happy, so she purchased the recently released 007 Goldeneye for the Nintendo Wii that I had expressed a few times (not so subtly) that I might enjoy playing. I first gaming experiences growing up were on my brother’s and my Super Nintendo. I remember my parents forcing us to raise funds and purchase the consul ourselves, a big feat for a couple of elementary school kids. (Fortunately, she did exchange our coins for larger bills at the bank just prior to the actual purchase) I think this was the best possible introduction to games I could have, as it taught a truly cooperative gaming experience. As the equipment belonged to the both of us, we almost never had the opportunity to play alone. Nearly every game we purchased was geared towards the multi-player experience and we got exceptionally good at Super Mario Kart and Yoshi’s Cookie.

Super Mario Kart

Our next step was again a shared purchase where we flipped to the Sony Playstation. Again with joint ownership comes advanced cooperative play with slightly better graphics and analog joysticks, we were untouchable in Spec. Ops. Stealth Patrol. It was nearing the end of high school for me and the world of computer games opened up. From 9th – 12th grade I was propped up night after night in the uncomfortable wooden chair positioned in front of our aging CRT monitor conquering one civilization after another in Age of Empires. This experience led to the event that I believe sparked my interest in computers and my love of technology: After my neighbor had installed a broken copy of his Command and Conquer game onto my computer I attempted to remove all remnants of the game from the hard drive and in the process managed to remove the command file from the computer. For those who may not know the implications of a computer without a command file in the hands of an inexperienced high schooler – we were without a computer for several days as the “professionals” attempted to recover some functionality to the machine. After this I went on to learn about dissecting and trouble shooting computer hardware issues from the same person who rescued our family from the command file issue.

Spec Ops Stealth Patrol

Age of Empires

During college I fell away from consul gaming altogether, a decision made by financial restrictions more than personal preference. I had to purchase a shiny new powerful laptop to handle complex computer modeling software required as part of the curriculum. I discovered the chief advantage for computer gaming is the accuracy of first person shooters. Call of Duty, Counter Strike, Half-Life 2, Crysis. It was about the time Crysis came out when I realized the chief disadvantage of computer gaming is the necessity of frequent hardware upgrades to retain the ability to operate the most recent games.

Crysis

To bring this lengthy summation full circle, the first consul I owned since the original Playstation is the Wii, (and that was only because I was able to leverage the appeal for many demographic groups to my wife, the non-gamer). What I think a lot of people don’t understand about the casual gamer is the actual appeal of the game. Once a player becomes familiar with the controls and the in-game movements become like second nature playing a game is like reading a create your own adventure book where you get to make decisions that affect the story line and at least have the illusion of dictating the speed and plot of the story. As games become more immersive and gain credibility as a legitimate art form the story line becomes more like playing your way through an interactive movie.

I still enjoy games, primarily multi-player games and first person campaigns during the winter months which is why I enjoy so much the memories of youthful friendships strengthened over group Duck Hunt sessions and N64 split-screen Goldeneye paintball matches.

Rivers and Tides

Last night we sat down to watch my favorite artist documentary about Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy creates site-specific land art primarily from material found at the site. He will use leaves, stones, twigs, moss, hair, clay, water, ice, sand, snow, anything that the site provides and allow the work to be derived from the materials available and how the site speaks to him.

The first time I was exposed to Goldsworthy was during an art history class in College. Much of the course was dedicated to studying the Naturalist/Artist relationships and imitating those relationships in our art. We worked at a small-scale first with studying principles of art such as space, order, perspective, and so on while viewing the Rivers and Tides documentary in class. Then we increased the scale and as a class constructed a large labyrinth deep in the woods behind the college. It was a great experience and my only regret was that I was not exposed to an art style like this before.

(via)

The whole time we were growing up my brother and I were experimenting with natural materials much the same way that Goldsworthy does, usually on a smaller scale and with less patience. Collecting, analyzing, sorting, arranging, only falling short of photographing. We were not aware we were creating art. It is my belief that if more young children were exposed to this type of artist, who essentially makes his living by playing in the woods, than I am confident that they would reflect more positively their time spent growing up in the woods. Goldsworthy primary skills with which he creates his fantastic artworks is patience and observation. Many of the ephemeral works he creates require hours of study and construction. The final work is not predetermined but derived from the location.

Cone

(via)

The reason I admire Goldsworthy so much is I envy his ability to become so consumed in nature such that it seems to be channeled through him. The ability to enter a location in the environment, a stream bed or cow pasture, and not only perceive the natural beauty that exists but to be able to enhance it through the reconfiguration of materials. I wish many times I had the patience it would require to produce one of these fantastic natural sculptures. One section of the documentary depicts Goldsworthy attempting to create one of his signature egg-shaped stone piles on a beach with the intention of the sea rising to envelope it at high tide. Goldsworthy took hours to build up a few layers of stone only to have it collapse not even half-way completed. He began again, still racing the tide. This repeated four times, each time gaining a little more height with an increasing understanding of the stone he was working with. Ultimately, he was unable to complete the sculpture within the allotted time before the tide reached his location, but the next scene flashed to the completed work with an approaching tide in the distance. I don’t know how I would feel if after a full day of toil I had absolutely no progress to show for my efforts, and still have the resolve to return and compete the work, still facing an innumerable amount of possible failures. I would wager many of us would have long since gone home and not return.

I have had the opportunity to visit a few of Goldsworthy’s installations in the past, both at Kentuck Knob Sculpture Garden during a college Architecture Club trip and more recently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. when my wife and I went on vacation there last year. I did not expect to see it but was able to recognize his work immediately as it stretched the entire length of the ground-level garden and broke into the building through the glass curtain wall. The low stone domes are meant to resemble the numerous architectural domes throughout the city. I do expect to visit another of his famous installations in the coming years though, the Storm King Wall, at Storm King Sculpture Park in Mountainville, NY down in the Hudson Valley. This work was detailed brilliantly in the Rivers and Tides documentary.