In today's walkabout of the neighborhood I looked up. There were not any clouds to be seen, mostly smog, but I did see more scaffolding. Yes, I do like seeing all this constant change going on above me as life continues below. Much like looking for shapes in clouds, I like to look at the shapes hidden behind the bamboo and mesh curtains.
Perhaps some parasitic attachment, hanging off the side
Perhaps a Christo wrapped Reichtag
Perhaps David Copperfield is making the building disappear, a la the Statue of Liberty
Perhaps a Christo wrapped Reichtag
Perhaps David Copperfield is making the building disappear, a la the Statue of Liberty
I liked the cantilever best. I like how you can graft parts to buildings like you can graft onto trees. I like the feeling of walking out onto this seemingly tenuously grafted walkway and looking down over the side in a mixture of awe and fear.
One would think that with all the simulation, hyperreality, and virtual life that we can trick ourselves into believing anything-- or disbelieving everything because it all has become a spectacle. But still, there are limits that my body will not allow me to overcome. The experience of weightlessness is one of them.
The Corning Museum has an area where a large plate of structural glass is suspended over the museum floor. You may walk out onto it. I did so, expecting that with all the movies and other visualizations of hovering over the air, that it would be no big deal. I took three steps onto the glass and suddenly my knees started to buckle. My body, even though it was completely supported, did not reconcile the fact that I could not see what was holding me up, and therefore I felt the strangest sensation that my body was trying to prepare me to fall. The phenomenon of my body experiencing that it saw nothing substantial holding me up outweighed my logical knowledge that I would not fall.
I remember this exact feeling when I was about ten years old. I had climbed up a partially dead tree, like I had before, and was stepping out onto a branch. Unlike all the previous times, this time the branch did not hold me. One moment I was one meter out on the branch and the next, I was succumbing to gravity. I'm sure that I fell instantaneously but in my head there was a second before comprehension that I was falling, where I remember thinking, "uh oh" and my knees feeling really weak because my feet had nothing firm underneath. Then "Aaaaaaaaa," followed by THUD. My father must have heard the thud because he came outside to find me laying on my back, surrounded by leaves and branches. "Are you okay?" he asked calmly. "I....caaaan't....breathe...." I gasped out. "Well that's because you have knocked the wind out of yourself," he chuckled, "take a minute and you'll be fine." So I lay there sucking wind back into my lungs while he walked around me and picked up the branches.
This time, I was able to back up off the weightless and substance-less looking glass. I made several more attempts to walk back onto the glass. Yup, my body did not want to believe it. Each time the knees felt soft and the palms sweated. Finally my museum companion became bored and wandered off. Otherwise I would have been tiptoeing on and off that glass plate for the rest of the afternoon.
One would think that with all the simulation, hyperreality, and virtual life that we can trick ourselves into believing anything-- or disbelieving everything because it all has become a spectacle. But still, there are limits that my body will not allow me to overcome. The experience of weightlessness is one of them.
The Corning Museum has an area where a large plate of structural glass is suspended over the museum floor. You may walk out onto it. I did so, expecting that with all the movies and other visualizations of hovering over the air, that it would be no big deal. I took three steps onto the glass and suddenly my knees started to buckle. My body, even though it was completely supported, did not reconcile the fact that I could not see what was holding me up, and therefore I felt the strangest sensation that my body was trying to prepare me to fall. The phenomenon of my body experiencing that it saw nothing substantial holding me up outweighed my logical knowledge that I would not fall.
I remember this exact feeling when I was about ten years old. I had climbed up a partially dead tree, like I had before, and was stepping out onto a branch. Unlike all the previous times, this time the branch did not hold me. One moment I was one meter out on the branch and the next, I was succumbing to gravity. I'm sure that I fell instantaneously but in my head there was a second before comprehension that I was falling, where I remember thinking, "uh oh" and my knees feeling really weak because my feet had nothing firm underneath. Then "Aaaaaaaaa," followed by THUD. My father must have heard the thud because he came outside to find me laying on my back, surrounded by leaves and branches. "Are you okay?" he asked calmly. "I....caaaan't....breathe...." I gasped out. "Well that's because you have knocked the wind out of yourself," he chuckled, "take a minute and you'll be fine." So I lay there sucking wind back into my lungs while he walked around me and picked up the branches.
This time, I was able to back up off the weightless and substance-less looking glass. I made several more attempts to walk back onto the glass. Yup, my body did not want to believe it. Each time the knees felt soft and the palms sweated. Finally my museum companion became bored and wandered off. Otherwise I would have been tiptoeing on and off that glass plate for the rest of the afternoon.
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