This past Friday I attended the interactive architecture exhibit at Eyebeam. It was an interesting evening, although due the usual babysitting issues that occasionally arise I was not able to stay for the discussion period. Overall, I thought the last three presentations were very interesting. Some of the most finished projects of the night were created by Marek Walczak. Afterwards, I went to his apartment project and decided to try to create my own. Basically apartment allows a user to type in words. The words then begin to develop a architectural blueprint of an apartment placing the words in specific rooms based on their underlying theme. It doesn't necessarily work how you would expect it to, words that are 'not found' (I guess) go off into the background and certain words that you may expect to be in one place actually end up in another. I have a very large window in my apartment thanks to typing in the word 'cat' several times. I also apparently have a red dining room, although the sentence I typed in was 'blankets should always be red'. You can go snoop on my room if you like. Its called "I love my" (I was trying to say I love my daughter...but daughter immediately got placed in the living room..I think my daughter would have preferred a playroom but oh well). I also snooped on several other rooms. They tend to be very interesting to look at and it is quite addictive once you get started. Something is interesting here, although you do come away from the construction wanting more control. But perhaps the fact that you don't necessarily have the control you would expect to have is part of what is interesting.

I also found his 7 World Trade Center : Podium Light Wall to be quite interesting. This was more along the lines of the projects I had expected to see here. The light wall reminded me of the two beams of light that the city had constructed after the World Trade Center attack to represent the towers. The sentiment in that case was obvious, the sentiment here is perhaps not so obvious. From the videos he showed, it actually looks quite beautiful but I have to wonder if it is actually as moving in real physical space, especially in the context of that location. In talking to a few people after the show, most of whom were not native New Yorkers, they had not realized the location of the wall. That had me wondering if its location informed its design and if it would 'feel' right in that particular space. The concept is interesting but I'm not sure yet. I have plans to go down and see it within the next week since it is apparently working now.