LAB WORK PENDING THOMAS MARK STANLEY
The work in this document was created by myself and my studio entities between 2007 and today. I prefer to reserve all rights to this work, and ask that no portion of it be reproduced without my written consent. Copyright Š 2012 This document was printed and built in the state of Michigan in the United States of America, in an edition of thirty copies. Typeset in DIN and Ultramagnetic by YouWorkForThem. StudioMars 297 N Maple Rd Ann Arbor, MI 48103 806.786.2194 studiomars.net thomasmarkstanley@gmail.com
The Trinity explosion, .0016 seconds after detonation. The Trinity test was the first ever test of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, by the US Army at the White Sands Proving Ground in the Jornada del Muerto (“route of the dead man”) in southeast New Mexico. This date is considered the beginning of the Atomic Age. At 05:29:45 Mountain War Time, “the gadget”, hoisted 100 feet above ground, detonated with the force of 20 kilotons of TNT.
this is portfolio of work by
THOMAS MARK STANLEY
together, with
STUDIOMARS a studio entitiy to whom parts of this work can also be attributed
11.28.14 11:46:17 PST Los Angeles, CA
OTHER SPACESUITS SELF-CONTAINED ATMOSPHERIC ENVELOPES, CRAFT-BASED MAKING PRACTICES, AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Other Spacesuits claims the Cold-War era Apollo spacesuit as the most exuberant piece of material and cultural production in history, recognizing it as one among many in an ontological genre of self-contained atmospheric envelopes–though some of them no longer resemble ‘suits’ at all–from the gas mask to the indoor shopping mall to the 24hour news cycle. I use the Apollo spacesuit as a catalyst for work on three architectural, but traditionally separate, discourses: the atmospheric and interfacial envelope, digital and analog methods of production, and aesthetic experience. The Apollo suit has borrowed from and contributed to a great mass of popular and material culture within the decidedly unique time and space of the Cold War Space Race. An aesthetic culture was built in and through it; its construction efficiency also produced an image of ambition, optimism, exploration, and success. The suit was also built by the Playtex company, producers of bras and girdles, because their skill-set was particularly apt for the demands of the craft. Its production was a mixture of high-tech engineering and very-careful hand craft. Building on Benjamin Bratton’s conception of the envelope as a designable, instrumental interface (with technologies like Augmented Reality, and IP version 6), this research investigates crucial interfaces among digital publics and atmospheric envelopes.
ON INTERFACIALITY Instead of ‘architects’, perhaps we should call ourselves ‘interfacers’. Put very simply, architects shape space; they divide it, they demarcate it, the define it from other spaces that surround it. They do this primarily through the use of surfaces. Surfaces (and here we might convincingly use the word “wall”) have a particular goal (among several lesser goals) of separating one space from another space–one pocket of air from another, let’s say. At a most basic level, all of architecture (and even urbanism) has traditionally been the making of space via the building of surfaces. Though, here we sit–in the 21st Century, where as much of our existence is immaterial as it is material. There are just as many zeros and ones that describe me, my subjectivity, my life- world, and my space as there are physical objects–just as many bits as there are atoms (and likely many, many more). I am as easily described by my credit card activity, my geolocation data, my cellular signal and even the types of brands I associate with or phrases I choose to google as I am by my city, my house, my clothing, or my things (my architecture, in other words). Apropos, Benjamin Bratton treats the envelope like an interface: “Any point of contact between two systems that governs the conditions of exchange between those two systems is an interface.” The envelope traffics– and here we must be more
urethane foam
soup labels
walnut
Moon Hammer is a series of replicas of the hammer used on the moon by Apollo missions 14, 15, 16, and 17.
AN’OTHER’ SPACESUIT
expansive and inclusive with the term ‘envelope’. One could think of the envelopes of the world, whether facades, or barriers, or borders, or cultures, or ideas, or images, or rumors, as collections of air (and this is air in the sense that Sloterdijk means it). And it is in the moments of exchange between these airs that produce what we might call culture, and ultimately subjectivity. The way we divide space is increasingly (and maybe somehow it always was) a problem of the air... and a problem of the interface... a problem of what travels through the air both very- literally and less-literally.
3D scan/print
plaster cast
paper
urethane rubber
pine
beeswax
OTHERNESS, THE MIRROR, THE SELFIE, AND THE OTHER
Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez 1656 Selfie, Ellen DeGeneres 2014
Joe Calderone, The Other Lady Gaga (her alter ego)
On February 5, 2007, NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak drove 900 miles from Houston to Orlando, where she was arrested and charged with the attempted kidnapping of U.S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, who was romantically involved with astronaut William Oefelein. She packed latex gloves, a black wig, a BB pistol and ammunition, pepper spray, a hooded tan trench coat, a 2-pound drilling hammer, black gloves, rubber tubing, plastic garbage bags, approximately $585 (USD) in cash, her computer, an 8-inch (20 cm) Gerber folding knife and several other items. Early police reports indicated she wore space diapers during the trip, but she later denied wearing them. This journey is a a key moment in the history of Other Spacesuits. Nowak wore the most fundamental, simplest piece of the spacesuit apparatus–the Constant Wear Garment–to take an analogous trip with decidedly other mission goals and parameters.
“The concept of the Other Person as expression of a possible world in a perceptual field leads us to consider the components of this field for itself in a new way. No longer being either subject of the field or object in the field, the other person will become the condition under which not only subject and object are redistributed but also figure and ground, margins and center, moving object and reference point, transitive and substantial, length and depth. The Other Person is always perceived as an other, but in its concept it is the condition of all perception, for others as for ourselves. It is the condition for our passing from one world to another. The Other Person makes the world go by, and the “I” now designates only a past world (“I was peaceful”).... The actual is not what we are but, rather, what we become, what we are in the process of becoming– that is to say, the Other, our becoming- other.” —Deleuze & Guattari, from What Is Philosophy?
“The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror,I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.” —Foucault, from Of Other Spaces
ON ACTUALIZATION Instead of ‘architects’, perhaps we should call ourselves ‘actualizers’. We live, after all, in that fuzzy moment between the material and the immaterial. I think the consternation about the world dissolving into digital ether has mostly passed. Now, it seems, between every immaterial step in our world, there is a moment of materialization. Check your pocket for that very-material gadget that accesses a deeper mine of digital information every day. And consider the miles of fiber optic cable that are delivering how many petabytes of information to how many people in this city right now. The scale of this relationship goes from nano- to globe- size, and likely (I’m speculating) to the atomic level. Architects move between ideas and things, that is their fundamental task. Perhaps no one is better suited to work the in-between than architects. Moving between the virtual and the actual is all in day’s work. Too bad, really, that conversation rarely escapes the bounds of building-making... unless of course architects began to think of buildings as systems within systems within globe- sized systems. In that case, the flow of information may well be as important as the connection to the ground; the construction of ideas may be as important as the structure of the building itself.
OTHER GLOVES The glove is the most complicated and crucial piece of the spacesuit; it is the interface between the astronaut and the environment. Other Gloves was a 6-hour workshop where students carefully measured and drew their ‘other’ hand; they used a maximum of 14 measures to produce the pattern. In total, each student made three other gloves, each as an extension of the previous one: the analog glove, the digital glove, and the ether glove. The analog glove was a direct, handmade translation from the measure themselves, using fabric, thread, tape, and latex. The digital glove was a digitization of the analog glove, where new, unexpected conditions for the glove began to emerge. The ether glove is a cloud-based identity for the glove itself, using RFID tags and names developed by each student.
THE LIVING MACHINE MIES VAN DER ROHE’S LAFAYETTE PARK DETROIT, MI
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PROJECT: The Living Machine, Lafayette Park, Detroit PROGRAM: Private Residence SCOPE: Design-Build, Interior Renovation ROLE: Designer, Builder, Fabricator, Project Manager STATUS: Complete ‌15
0'-4"
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6'-6 41 "
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1" 11'-8 2
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PAMPHLET ARCHITECTURE 34 In 2012 I was invited by Perry Kulper and Nat Chard to design their volume of Pamphlet Architecture. The authors were synthesizing a third conversation out of an already existing pair they had begun long before. With the authors living on different continents, the graphic design of the book itself needed to help produce the collaboration between them. Relational thinking is important in their work, and the design of Pamphlet 34 folds thoughts and images across one another graphically to help immerse the reader in the flavor of the work–letting two, three, or even ten thoughts emerge together all at once. Though our efforts were also aimed at letting the vibrancy of their work speak for itself without undermining it by overworking the graphics. The graphic design of Pamphlet 34 basically needed to get the conversation started, then let the content sustain it.
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“
The name itself is inclusive. This pamphlet series sets out to actively seek, document, and distribute thick, sometimes-odd, provocative ideas. AND purposely searches for the “other”, the “extra-”, the “because-you-wanted-to”—not only within this building but across disciplines, into business ventures, and anywhere else it can go. AND is less concerned with the rigors of the design studio and instead pursues the moments of necessity, the impulse to make, and the otherwise unnoticed. AND is quick and dirty, off-the-cuff. More recent and more often; but never acritical. AND is responsive to the work it receives, and its critical take is determined by its contents. It is a curatorial effort. AND is what you make.
”
[AND Statement, 2009]
‘AND’ PAMPHLET SERIES In 2009, Mary O’Malley and I created the pamphlet series “AND” at the College of Architecture at the University of Michigan. It is a project of documentation and dissemination of small-but-extraordinary things, and it is invested in discourse and studio culture as crucial inputs to any design thinking. There were small projects, events, humors, and oddities happening all around, with no way to seize the energy of those things toward a collective culture of making the school could feed on. We inserted an artifact into the culture that other kinds of design energies could latch onto. Aside from producing an issue per semester, AND began to sponsor workshops, midnight-pancake release parties, winter-beard-growing contests, and studio happy hours.
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AND has been documented and included in a study on small (often student-created) architecture publications by Sean Billy Kizy at Rice University. AND is printed in editions of 500 copies at Michigan Web Press.
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DIMENSIONS 22 Dimensions is the annual, student-produced journal of architecture at the University of Michigan. It seeks to contribute to the critical discourse of architectural education by documenting the most compelling work produced by its students, faculty, fellows, and visiting lecturers. In a one-year project with a group of five others, I designed and edited volume 22. We produced the entire book, including: soliciting work, choosing contributors, organizing content, designing layouts, content editing, copy editing, and completing the printing process with the press.
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MAKING APPARATUSES MICROTERROR, AMBIGUOUS GRASS, THE JUST-IN-CASE-CLAUSE, AND OTHER SPATIO-TEMPORAL GIMMICKRY
Making Apparatuses: Microterror, Ambiguous Grass, The Just-In-Case-Clause, and Other Spatio-Temporal Gimmickry. This project is a simultaneous production of design and theory, as I developed both material design—in the form of five machines that inhabit an already existing (and quite real) corporate office complex in Southfield, Michigan—as well as theoretical essays that build the discursive project of the five machines. It theorizes the types of subjects that encounter that space as they are set against very calibrated architectural and informational backgrounds.
MS_DR PAMPHLET SERIES VOL. 19 GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM
MAKING APPARATUSES
Microterror, Ambiguous Grass, The Just-In-Case Clause, and Other Gimmickry
THOMAS MARK STANLEY
THOMAS MARK STANLEY
STUDIO 3
PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
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Studio 3 Performing Arts Center, primarily a dance studio, is in Dexter, MI. Conceptual drives in this project, for us, were the staging of social and economic relationships among three constituencies: parents, students, and teachers. Separate space for each was a programmatic requirement, but the overlaps at the boundaries of each space produce moments of agency among the actors at play. One can decide how to proceed. The architecture of the interior produces values and nudges hierarchies.
PROJECT: Studio 3 Performing Arts Center PROGRAM: Dance Studio SCOPE: Design-Build, Interior Renovation MY ROLE: Designer, Builder, Fabricator, Project Manager STATUS: Complete ‌35
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customfabricated barres
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Dance Moms is a realitytelevision series that follows a dance studio, its students, and their (often psychologically violent) mothers. We discovered it shortly after beginning the project. The show was a major conceptual contributor to our project.
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Entry sequence.
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The original interior.
South studio.
North studio.
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Sprung floor system
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CART HOUSE PLUM MARKET
PROJECT: Cart House, Plum Market, Ann Arbor PROGRAM: Shopping Cart Storage, Transition from Exterior to Interior, Euphoria SCOPE: Design-Build, 450 sq. ft. MY ROLE: Designer, Builder, Fabricator STATUS: Complete
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1:1 prototype model
nested structure
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THE SPATIAL POLITICS OF IMAGE PRODUCTION
THE INSTITUTE OF FUTUROLOGY LAB WORK PENDING / THE INSTITUTE OF FUTUROLOGY
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The Image is perhaps the most powerful thing in the world. In all it’s manifestations,
it has the power to convince us that things happen (or do not happen), to initiate a war, trigger the exchange of capital, destroy consumer (or personal) confidence, underwrite false histories, provide for alternate futures, or put a man on the moon. Living on a globe, most of my relationships are not line-of-sight; they bounce off satellites, they are reflected down fiberoptic cables, or perhaps just imagined in my head. Even in the last ten years, the image (or it’s reproduction rate) has gained speed, gained agency on a near exponential level. Scopic regimes rely on producers of images, fiction-dealers, futurologists, and privilege those who can reproduce their own image, or otherwise have it reproduced for them. Indeed, as Jonathan Crary elaborates, even as early as the 19th Century “a new valuation of visual experience” was taking place, with “unprecedented mobility and exchangeability, abstracted from any founding site or referent.” He posits a kind of “observer-consumer”, where images are exchanged as sure as capital. Debord and Foucault both claim visuality as quintessential, even foundational, in their philosophy, but it is Crary that posits the emergence of ‘the observer’ as a visual subject, who participates in systems of image exchange as a kind of consumption of their own existence in the world, separate from any ‘reality’. 49
(continued) Image, here, is not only as pixels on a page or a screen, but as a wide set of political or socio-visual phenomena, a kind of visuality. But the image (a noun) seats those phenomenal traits of visuality and mass culture firmly within the world of materialization, the world of the architect. The project carries with it five types of image: the public image (celebrity and publicity), the self image (fashion and body composition), the cognitive image (fiction and visual history), the potential image (secrets and latencies), and the situational image (catastrophe and spectacle). Each type cares for the image in a different way. This project is made of five constituent parts that describe the Institute of Futurology: an Apparatus for Future Communication, an Image Map of the Institute itself, A Uniform (a piece of “deep” clothing), A Fiction (written), and A Situation (a set of catastrophic conditions). These five are descriptions of an Institution that, in the 21st Century is increasingly difficult to render. To produce moments of coherency in the architecture of the Institute, this project produces its “lesser” architectures.
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The Apparatus for Future Communication is a proposal made by the Institution of Futurology. It operates on the increasing power of the image across many kinds of media, among which Reinhold Martin says “architecture is prominently figured.� It describes the Institute as a set of hard-wired, infrastructural connections that gather and feed visual information as well as a screen that conveys images that abandon any hard infrastructure in favor of the airwaves.
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The Five types of image in the project.
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THE INSTITUTE OF FUTUROLOGY
STANDARD ISSUE : FALL 2010 ISSUE:
EXP:
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UPPER SLEEVE UPPER SLEEVE 上面的袖子
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OFF-CENTER FRONT FLAP FOR ASYMMETRICAL LOOK
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不對稱的找的歪前水板 ةرظانتم ريغ ةرظن لجأ نم ةيمامألا ةحوللا زكرم جراخ
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FRONT PANEL FRONT PANEL
INTERIOR FLAP FOR DISCREET AND SECURE STORAGE
يولعلا مك
0001.13040
UNDER SLEEVE
0001.13040 12/20/2010
*DESTROY PREVIOUS COPY UPON RECEIPT. IF THIS DOCUMENT IS LOST OR STOLEN, CONTACT YOUR SUPERIOR IMMEDIATELY.
BACK PANEL BACK PANEL 後板
面板
謹慎和和安全存貯的內部水板 نمآلا نيزختلاو ةيرسلل ةيلخادلا فرفر
UNDER SLEEVE
ةحول مامأ
ةيفلخلا ةحوللا
0001.13040
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在袖子之下 مامكألا تحت
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LENGTHEN OR SHORTEN HERE 加長或縮短這裡 انه ريصقت وأ ةلاطإ
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GRAIN
SIDE PANEL
STRAIGHT
直紋 بوبحلا ميقتسم
後板 ةيفلخلا ةحوللا
STRAIGHT GRAIN
直紋 بوبحلا ميقتسم
軍事顏色是在此秋天
MILITARY COLORS ARE IN THIS FALL
لاف اذه يف ةيركسعلا ناولأ
直紋 بوبحلا ميقتسم
STRAIGHT GRAIN
直紋 بوبحلا ميقتسم
STRAIGHT GRAIN
0001.13040
EXTRA-LONG SLEEVES ARE THE NEW LOOK 特長袖子是新的找 ةديدج ةرظن جراخ نم ةليوطلا مامكألا FOLD IN SLEEVES FOR DOUBLE-THICK INSULATION WHILE WORKING IN DEEP WIRING 摺疊在緣材料的袖當工作在深刻的接線時
直紋 بوبحلا ميقتسم
STRAIGHT GRAIN
قيمعلا كالسألا يف لمعي ناك امنيب كيمسلا جودزملا لزعلل مامكألا يف فاعضأ
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FRONT HIP PANEL FRONT HIP PANEL
BACK HIP PANEL BACK HIP PANEL
ONESIE BOTTOM FOR AN INTEGRATED PIECE OF CLOTHING
前熟悉內情的面板 كرولا ةحول مامأ
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回到熟悉內情的面板
衣物個集成部分的底層
ةدوعلا كرولا ةحول
سبالملا نم ةلماكتم ةعطقلل يلفسلا ييسين
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FOLD-IN HIDEAWAY BACK PANELING FOR STORAGE OF TOOLS AND MATERIALS 摺疊在隱匿處工具和材料存貯的返回銑板
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連接 لصوم
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STRAIGHT GRAIN
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CONNECTOR CONNECTOR
直紋 بوبحلا ميقتسم
直紋 بوبحلا ميقتسم
STRAIGHT GRAIN
داوملاو تاودألا نيزختل ةدوع ةسيبلت أبخملا يف فاعضأ
As I entered the elevator again, I studied the uniform buttons as I always do. After all, what else is there to look at in an elevator? One button looked no different from the next - each silver and perfectly round with a small red light in the center, six of which were illuminated. I thought how easy it would have been to push any of them with equal intention, had I not known where I was going. The subtle bounces and low hum between each of the periodic stops made me realize I was traveling some great distance, but each time the elevator doors opened and closed I was distracted and taken again by my own image in the silvery reflection. “I need a haircut,” I thought, becoming acutely aware of the goofylooking part everyone else saw. I was not finished critiquing myself when the elevator doors slid open, and what filled the frame where they were - the only thing I could see - were what seemed like millions of tiny luminescent insects facing away from me in a brilliant glow, each with it’s own set of three small wires in a tangled, but organized mass. I was taken back, as it was not quite what I expected. I stepped out, over that same elevator threshold that seems to be in every single lift-box ever made, and looked to my left and to my right. The lights seemed to go on indefinitely in both directions, and now that I could see the extent of the monster, I noticed the flashes and waves of light and color that moved across its entirety; though, the image was obscured by the wiring. The others that came off the crowded elevator seemed to know exactly which way to head; about a third turned right, and two-thrids left, all of them staring into their iPhones, Blackberrys, or any number of other devices I couldn’t identify, not saying a word. There was no question, for them, about their destination. As for me, I was expecting a much different sight and was now unsure. If I could find a window and look out over the city, I could orient myself. I couldn’t imagine this floor was too large to find my way. I went right. I walked by an office door to my right—the kind you would see in a movie, with translucent glass in a neat rectangle in the upper portion with bold, black helvetica that read “PROGNOSTICATOR”. I thought it was odd; it was the same title as on the jacket they had me put on in the changing room.
No one spoke. It was entirely frustrating. “I came here for a reason,” I told the woman who sat behind the desk, but she didn’t look up. She was taken with the small screen in front of her that, I suspected, had the same flash of images I saw on every screen on this floor. She only held up a single index finger, as if she would get to me shortly; she, of course, would not get to me shortly. Above and behind her was the largest piece of glass I had ever seen. It held behind it what I imagined, based on the quality of the suits the men wore, was the board room. I couldn’t seen in very well as the floor of the room was well above my head; I saw only glimpses of heads and shoulders against the blue sky behind them. I...wondered quickly which direction the view was pointed up there, as I had completely lost my bearings with all the turns. There was a faint reflection in the glass. I turned to face the source, and saw the massive screen—facing me this time. Behind that, a pair of elevator doors opened and a flood of people filed out. There was one, slightly slower-moving shape that came off the elevator. I noticed he looked quite like me, with the very same jacket. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if what I saw was reality or an image. 57
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For Megan.
The Trinity gadget just before detonation in New Mexico, 1945.