These imagesepresent the arid outer atmosphere surrounding the oasis within a dome. My goal is to work with the contrast of lifeless surface and the humid/tropical climate within the dome.

“The bioengineers were already working on new microorganisms: shifting, clipping and recombining genes from algae, methanogens, cyanobacteria, and lichens, trying to come up with organisms that would survive on the present Martian surface, or under it.” Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars p.172

This was much more involved than I had expected, and hope we have some time to review civil 3d and contours. Also, my surface kept breaking as I was moving vertex points and I couldn’t tell until trying to render it that i had to go back in and weld things together. Why is that? Anyway it definitley doesn’t look like an earthly landform. I was inspired by reading about the formation of mountain chains by craters rather than plate tectonics, so I wanted to create an exploding range of steep slopes.

Sunday night, September 23, 2007. The Cleveland Indians won the championship today. Not entirely irrelevant to life on Mars. In fact it makes me think that my “shelter” will have more use as a tool for weaving the social fabric of the new colony, than educating them about their new homeplanet. This is a photo of a planetarium in Spain and everytime I look at it I am inspired to work on my model, which then becomes quite frustrating and humiliating. When I am just playing with shapes, its fun, but when I try to actually create a thing of beauty, I really struggle. Ultimately, my device provides a much needed solarium/beach during the day (all that sand and no beach?????) and a planetarium/event arena in the evenings. So, I may have oversimplified my design a little as I decided to stick to lofting helixes to create the interior bowls that are to be constructed like baskets. I also used taper to convert a cylinder into a rather complex pie pan shaped base. One idea I have is that the whole device acts like an enormous speaker and thus it looks like a speaker cone and vibrates like a speaker cone and when its time to celebrate the shelter transforms into an intergalactic discotheque. I guess I need to put that info on the board. Mars needs audio!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t wait to learn how to put moving lights into our models.

This is one very informative podcast about current exploration and conditions on mars!

http://media-c02m01.libsyn.com/podcasts/712172d3afd995697afa76a373260769/46ebe719/astronomycast/AstroCast-070903.mp3

You really need to watch  this.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/32

Imagining a device useful to humans on mars a good diversion from studio. Here are some links to youtube clips that are pretty cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1hZM1AAUog&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiGH9QNiU0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOsVdflPY68&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXY9ohIuJPg&mode=related&search=

A Confederacy of Dances is next weekend in New Orleans and is a mixed media showcase of choreography and experimental music. Its one of my old projects and I would love to be able to attend if anyone else is interested or just going to New Orleans that weekend, let me know. Gabe and Potpie also produce NOISE, New Orleans Innovative Sound Experiment, so there will be some of that if you like. Electrical Spectical is very entertaining theramin funk and Scott Heron is undescribable. You should check out his website http://www.scottheron.org/.

My brain crashed.

All I can think about is life beyond studio. Today in history two presentations were about sites in San Francisco, where I will be spending some time in June after going to Napa with my sister. Yeah, champagne, wine, food, shopping, days of beauty, more champagne! Who has time to work?

In the meantime, you won’t be seeing me during intersession because I am designing the lighting for a dance concert in New Orleans. All of you should come check it out. No buns or tutus. It rocks! Its comic and irreverent and at times serious and since we talk about choreography so much around here, this would demonstrate the full meaning of that concept. How edifying. Its at NOCCA on June 1&2 at 8pm. Should last an hour, (yes we will have a bar at NOCCA) so hang out and play in the bywater!

 Check out the site at http://www.tsunamidance.com

http://www.ruderal.com/bullshit/bullshit.htm