Bernard Tschumi, La Vilette Fireworks, 1992

VOLATILITY RESEARCH GROUP, Architectural Research Lab EX.02: SURVEY, CATALOG, INDEX For this exercise, we are concerned with the small scale, the local features and instances that comprise an event-system Using the context chosen for your charts in EX.00, and the series/timeline of events from EX.01, zoom in to carefully consider the collection of local instances, conditions, nodes, precedents, typologies, standards, mechanisms, episodes or operations that comprise these larger event-systems. Generate a rigorously-organized survey, catalog, or index of these local instances, categorizing them according to their logic: 3 @ 11x17 sheets. Show a selection of these local instances represented at a slightly larger scale, to explain the logic of how they operate, and to identify the basic parameters governing their categorization. Carefully consider what representational technique you are using for this collection. How does the organization of the drawing reflect the organizational logic of this series of items? What are the key variables that youre focusing on, and how does this provide clues to effective representational techniques? How do you propose to use this catalogue, and how do notational & reference information help categorize the instances in a productive manner? Consider other notational systems -- music, playbooks, field manuals, etc. -- and how they break down larger systems into smaller chunks like episodes or categories. How do you break down the larger system youre working with, and use that logic to organize the smaller instances that comprise it? How could these variables be activated -- or transformed -- in order to produce new instances, or new combinations (for the upcoming EX.03)? EX.03: MASHUP, HYBRID, RECOMBINATION For this exercise, we are concerned with methods of transformation, inducing a series of modifying events Using the catalog/index from EX.02, construct a machine that produces new mashups, hybrids, iterations or recombinations of the surveyed conditions. Generate (min.) 3 mashups, 3@11x17 Examples might be exquisite corpse drawing assemblages, tarot or playing cards, random scenario generations, combinatorial learning machines, Rube-Goldberg devices, evolutionary trees. What are the events, triggers, catalysts, etc. that precede each new iteration? How do the events that are at work in your own design process while constructing these mashups parallel (or differ from) event-triggers that might be operating in context? What are the constraints that limit which outcomes can be formed, or which might be viable in a given context? How do these mashups stretch the extents of your timeline from EX.01, add to the contextual conditions charted in EX.00, and create new categories within the survey from EX.02