days without architecture 沒有建築的日子

告白

2010-11-20T20:34:00.003+08:00

當這個世界對年青人犯過的罪沒有懲罰，只有告白和寬恕。一齊對他們變得很輕，很無規律。時間就仿似消失在手機短詢之間，有時停頓，有時刹那即逝。沒有責任和內疚，只有自我。周邊每一個細節都放得很大、很清淅，但感覺不到生命，因為停留在這樣的世界裏是很虛無飄渺的…

山雨欲來

2010-07-12T00:09:00.001+08:00

當你在人生谷底裏，走出的每一步都有山雨欲來的感覺。

Everything is to be an end

2010-06-12T19:21:00.010+08:00

Those who believe in God, they are pragmatists… if God exist, they will be rewarded, if not, they have nothing to lose*…

Those who believe that nothing can exist beyond their comprehension, they are zombies… their lives are full of agonies of doubt, knowing that death is incomprehensible but inevitable, they make death lives twice…

*quotes from "fooled by Randomess" Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Functional constituency

2010-05-17T00:16:00.002+08:00

Intent determines function, purpose reflects interest… Intent serves an ideal, interest is simply taking… Our functional constituencies are interest groups that neither serve any social function nor share loyalty to any professional field, only to fulfill personal interest… A group of purposeful beings that perpetuate greed and steal from our future generations… Please note!

Paraphilia

2010-04-25T23:47:00.011+08:00

Gazing haplessly at the beloved AV star 蒼井空in bondage, everything feels tender and denuded. The interior is sterilized and memories scattered, the Oedipus figure repeats the horror… at every traits of maternal love to be fetishized, the suicidal act resurrects. The Oedipus’s soul fades in at every minute interior detail, the milk leveled to an exact, the wooden grain found echo in the ring of the nymph’s finger, the charm embodies the victim to reverence the sadist and he remembers all sins only to aggravate the pain, of that rememberances he repents as the victim fades… The empathy is the paraphiliac resembling and reminiscencing the childhood drear interior @ where the macabre tales unfolds…

2010

2010-01-04T00:24:00.009+08:00

Arms are numb, sweaty, with stenches of second hand Marlboro menthol admixed with Chanel no.5 (Shenzen version) on the mini skirts... The dslr cameras are recording, for every moment to be endured, of glittering lights become the signs of our time and pounding rhythm turning new generations... our shimmering glimpses of hope intensified @ this new decade to come…

LMF live @ 2010

Paradise

2009-11-11T22:21:00.005+08:00

Paradise is what you found…Utopia is what you made…

Paradise is the reflection of a long lost spell, an eclipse of promise land where one’s benevolent heart is displayed.

Utopia is a curse, the never land of ideas, forever a myth intrenches upon one’s soul.

Ashes of time… 旗未動，風也未動，是人的心自己在動

2009-06-06T23:08:00.022+08:00

The ashes of time is the remains of souls in the fight with the fore-ordained manuscript- the days of joyous, the days of innocence, the days of clinging, the days of revolution... are the ancestral predestinated chronicles where the signs of time subjugated to a fatalistic end. Upon our acceptance of an ineluctable destiny, it scatters one’s faith and deepens one’s forgetfulness. For our ancestral blood in the relentless fights with destiny is the transfusion of passion that bleeds from the first who survived from an inevitable death-
"the first sea creature who jumped out of its aquatic world and determined to be on land > the first primate who stood up to look at the world differently and became easy prey”

... to the last who stands guard one’s faith against time... Time returns to dust from ashes while the souls of the new blood search for the flaws in the fore-ordained manuscript. At time when fate in compatible with one’s “amor fati”, the ashes of soul checkmates its opponent (fate) amidst networks of oracles, prophecies and fatalistic nodes.

Garden of delights

2009-05-15T00:18:00.007+08:00

Good slave believes every species has its own spacetime- manifold… The celestial mass warps the spacetime continuum, the terrestrial species carves the eddies out of the manifolds with the whirl of sensation that molds the landscape. The agility of one species induces blurriness in another less agile species for the conception of spacetime. Prey and predator relation is the amorphous clouds of manifold’s predictions that compete for spacetime information of its opponent’s momentum- For more agile predator, more fuzzy information gives away. For survival, the prey advances in the conception of the predator’s manifold by being in/out of phase with predator’s foraging and to optimize vigilance frequency (meandering in between the role of eating or being eaten) to match predator’s agility, together they evolve in the whirl of manifolds information that molds sensation into terrestrial-dimensions, allowing species communications form part of the spacetime equations.
For every six years we have a new pandemic- avian flu @97, SARS @03, swine flu @09. Our flattening world accelerates exponentially, but the evolution of virus series h5n1, SARS-CoV, h1n1 engages in time dilation and coordinates transformation at placid pace. The viral codes forage to the spacetime continuum of our livestock, the search of gene transcripts to oscillate in phase with livestock is to dominate their circannual/infradian/circadian/ultradian rhythm. While the endogenous timing is sensory based, the coding of genes is regulated by celestial cycle (1 circadian cycle= 1 rotation of the earth) and each rhythm is fractal in oscillation from year to day’s intervals. Human is confused whether to distance themselves from livestock to accelerate the flat world phenomena or live closer for a sustainable world, but the rise and fall of gene expressions to compensate the circadian rhythm evolves at materialistic changes (temperature, light, air pressure, magnetic field) of the earth. The viral gene perturbation is the path connected among manifolds, a connectedness topology in the arena of overlapping coordinates systems among species that moderates the conception of spacetime.

Recipe for Disaster

2009-04-22T21:25:00.003+08:00

Disaster comes when there is disbelief… (Incidents here)

Our beliefs in Gaussian world to quarantine the improbable, we varnish the extremes to minimize their contributions in our differential models, of complex singularities become insignificant within the vast smoothening system. The embedding of extreme’s magnitudes to such determinative models are seeds for the disaster. The wild copulates with the tame, of what seemingly disparate events are forced to correlate and be normalized under the Gaussian smoothening expressions. The seeds of diminished extremes become ubiquitous, erratic and non-conformal to any elegant mathematical formula, an exponent of the improbable for our conformal mapping of a dominant landscape, an invariant for the scaling of the folds (in proliferations of disasters) optimized under our deterministic applications (Gaussianized risks, probability, defaults).

Nature offers information erratically, it awaits us to scrutinize its’ scalable impact by allowing coefficients derived across discontinue contours, finding equations equivalency along sharp jumps and differentials to define the connectedness flow. The Gaussianization of singularities into singular form of function equalizes the impact of disaster and converges the diverging risk into our parameterized model with initial exponential data as completed parametric input. Our elegant models become the disbelief of possibilities exists beyond its surface beauty, a language of attractions, of beliefs in the integrity of models (– minimal surfaces, mathematical purity, geophysics) that visualize form with the same representational, metaphorical and referential equations.

… We are enslaved by the representations of fractal patterns, voronoi façades and sine/cosine twisting towers without the awareness of the fractal exponents of reality…
… And we are entangled with parameterized phenomena (frequencies, velocity, density) and the embodiment of forms with visual metaphors (metaphysical, ontological, transcendental meanings)/ formation aesthetic (geo-mimicry) without the awareness of the improbable landscape awaits us to infer with exotic equations….
… For improbable is impenetrable, not to be imitated but preserved with paradoxical mapping at our furthering departure from visual metaphors.

For references here, here and here.

Song of songs

2009-02-14T10:40:00.027+08:00

The "Wordle" creation of The Blower's Daughter.

When in love, it is the profoundly of love that finds the words, for every voice of the beloved made becomes the song of songs. When it ends, love depicted in a cloud of enigma by which our mortal beings are parabled.

Happy Valentine’s Day

不知道為了什麼

憂愁它圍繞著我

我每天都在祈禱

快趕走愛的寂寞

那天起

你對我說

永遠地愛著我

千言和萬語

隨風雲掠過

不知道為了什麼

憂愁它圍繞著我

我每天都在祈禱

快趕走愛的寂寞

千言萬語曲:古月詞:爾英

Muscle memories

2009-02-10T21:34:00.009+08:00

Architecture is pure muscle memories. You are possessed... and you practice endlessly, only to be fractured and desolated in the rebuilding of a stronger self... soul weigh upon the body, body lock in the repetitive action, of a recursive cycle deepened by awareness. You are an outlier, besieged and heavy, the 10,000 hrs rule does not apply, for your propagating practices makes everything timeless, agile and ether. The world becomes an impulse, an aftereffect of the reflex act of your soul. Memories synchronize with muscles and body mass fiddles with the evolving world of an awareness funnels into the barbarous cycle, of accelerating rhythm to out power the world only to return the desolated soul.

Future 09

2009-01-03T22:25:00.004+08:00

Good slave has been an otaku 御宅族, turning the back on the world, gazing at the shadowy world becomes more shadowy… Everyday is so beautiful when time stops and everything looks more beautiful under the moving shades… When time stops, the futures find their way with time (as variables) not being in the equations. Currencies move with love, commodities move with lust and futures move with gratifications. Only then good slave envisions the passionately connected pace among the futures with the shadowy world signifying the abyss of time. The realization of an improbable future by casting the shadowy index onto the emotional world, a pace for the guru to lead the world out of the abyss.

Happy New Year and wish you were here always.

Hopelessness

2008-11-01T12:28:00.004+08:00

"The chaser" 追擊者 is a hyper-real movie, it amplifies the sense of hopelessness in the vicious world of the counterpart. The battle of good vs. evil, intend vs. causality, reality veils under an irremediable cause and our indifferences to such minute detailing, the devilish intend unfolds. The shimmering crucifix form is the constellation that channels the history of evil, a guiding light that pilots the chaser to the breeding ground of evil where the crucifixion took place. Darkness bores hope and lightness gives path to the disorderly world of diminishing faith, the closer to the serial killer, the distancing to the victim, of misery illuminates the virtue (the chaser) only to reveal his self-destructive nature.

The revenge of architecture

2008-10-14T23:26:00.008+08:00

When architecture serves for profit maximization under the elegant models of Friedman’s economic philosophy, the impact is more immense than the model itself can visualize. The architecture of social noises & messy geographic conditions copulates with Friedmanites’ hard science, the imperfect world becomes the material impact defying any utopian thoughts.

Architecture operates with limits. The limits of greed, inhumanity and selfishness. The mystical lines of architecture quarantines inferiority and liberates the communal forces to regulate robustic goals of politics and economy. The material link of architecture transgresses the hard science of deregulations, privatizations and free markets, from its detrimental impact of greed to the communal joy of sharing.

When the material link is repressed, the fusing of architectural automata and greedy inflation is the fuel to this human betrayal (free person = free market + free consumption). In return, architecture regulates every room, town and city to be deserted or vanished from this unregulated world.

傾城之戀

2008-09-18T00:16:00.015+08:00

這一次風暴，正要吹向我們的懷裹。

她的來臨使我們有了希望，把一些不想軀存的東西，一拼吹走。

內心是有些不安，雨點卻瀟瀟地擊向我們，有點像為了殉情，也有點像為了洗滴我們的心靈。

我們內心風暴也給了回應，她選擇了我們，我們選擇了戀愛，內心的灼熱和外在風暴是給我們一些共同信念而來。

Many years ago, good slave wrote the above short passage mainly to kill time on an El Niño day!

Smile

2008-09-16T21:36:00.009+08:00

Today seems like a bad day for many who decided to stay, however, things are not as bad as you may think, or at least you are still online here to keep good slave company.

:-)

What's the best investment you can make?
"Invest in yourself," Warren Buffett said

The story of Daedalus returned @ 2008 Beijing Olympics 北京奧運開幕

2008-08-22T21:39:00.020+08:00

In Greek mythology, the “plan” of the labyrinth was to contain the monster Minotaur, of the child given birth by the human beastly thoughts. When Daedalus was imprisoned by his own creation of the labyrinth, he alleviated himself to a "section" viewing to resolve a "plan" puzzle- the building of the wings to levitate one’s thought and body to higher altitude. However, the story ended with the tragic death of Daedalus’s son Icarus who was exhilarated by flight and flew beyond his capacity.

In 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, the mass game was a simulacra of a digitized labyrinth-like environment. Human mass performances synchronized with the particles display on the mega LCD, of embodiment with symbols, mass and spectacular, bodies become an extension of the pixels metrics. The labyrinth-like animation was the merging of pixels and bodily dynamics, with guiding movement of instructions emitted from blue tooth-like device attached to each performer, it alleviated the mass game to a digitized conducting performance. At the final scene of body levitation, the chasing of the Olympic script was the return of Daedalus’s curse. The imprisonment of the endless “plan” in disguise as “section”, tempting one's ego to go beyond the limit.

Time is fractal 明日之歌

2008-08-11T00:45:00.010+08:00

Good slave has an addiction. At times when numbers affected good slave deeply in the past and begin to resurrect recursively, good slave believes is angelic. A form of whispering chant from the guardian to announce good slave worthy to be in its presence. Numbers chart our desire in the moving average of time, at intervals when the affections radiate from the fast entangles with the slow moving desire, time becomes fractal and so does desire. The moving average of desire is the line of revelation when it diverges to designation opposites to the world tendency. The immediate present interval of lines leap into the passing world of desire, of same fractals displaying the delaying modes of lines depart to an uncharted world. The fast slows down while corresponding to a disparate attraction, the world idles and flattens to a point fold. The movement of recursive numbers brings joy to good slave, it enheartens a lost soul for its annunciation for a new fractal time.

我要你為明天歌唱
我帶著淚珠切切盼望
我去了我去了
明天的花兒一樣香
我去了我去了
明天的太陽一樣光
我要你為明天歌唱
我帶著淚珠切切盼望
分別了分別了
明天的美酒你獨嘗
分別了分別了
明天的歌曲你獨唱
為了我們明天難相見
此恨綿綿問蒼天
把枕邊細語
一句句記在心田
對明天陽光
一聲聲引吭向前
明天明天
我們在夢中再相見
啊……
我要你為明天歌唱
我含笑留下這篇詞章
忘了吧忘了吧
明天不再是哀傷
記住了記住了
明天是充滿了希望

作詞:沈華作曲:顧嘉輝編曲:李端嫻

Ultimate terror

2008-08-03T22:45:00.025+08:00

In the video released by the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), the terrorist group commander Seyfullah made threats to terror attacks for the 2008 summer Olympic events (details here). However, he made good slave and the whole world ponder more than fear, for his threats to blow up a competition entry of the Olympic stadium and not the built one.

Competition entry no. B01
Should he threaten the same if he knew entry no.B11 suppose to be the winning entry? If he did and with an intention, would he possess some mystical power to destroy a concept for architecture? This sounds like the ultimate terror in architecture, a threat to destroy the built and the unbuilt at someone's discretion.

Sink ship 沈船

2008-07-09T00:40:00.017+08:00

For man, sink ship is disastrous when
Woman got soul

Or with moves!

Your gaze at her is fatal but makes life lives twice.

Can you feel it? 你感覺到嗎?

2008-07-06T22:56:00.027+08:00

In animation, there is a zillion way to walk and with an attitude. Every posture is a series of extractions defining certain highlights/extremes only to be reconnected by the animator’s imagination. To be virtually natural is to search for postural extremes that express inner thoughts/emotions and to animate the posture with kinetics, of inevitable moves that guide the animator’s imagination and subsequence mathematics scripting.

In reality, only 1/zillion% of it falls within the human perceivable spectrum, while the remaining % is often regarded as delusional. The iterative signs within the 1/zillion% have the same progressions of the remaining unperceivable spectrum. While the perceivable lags behind and resonates with the delusive spectrum in shape and movement, the future becomes a recursive/delaying mode of displaying the already present (the inevitable), a projectile of self-affine series of events that is imminent but random at immediate viewing and with a well orchestrated movement at its exponential contributions. Reality becomes a black box sank below the placid lake of the already present future, of data displaying the imminent impact well preserved at the midst of the unforeseeable unknown.

Prophets and animators are interpolators of reality. They foresee the inevitable of the exponential seeding, re-stitching the extremes of the improbable and announce the imminent impact at the signs of the time. Prophets/animators navigate to the unforeseeable realm only to bring back the gems of the black box, displaying the textural ordinates of the unknown and conceive the unforeseeable. The recurring numbers and occult symbols are mystical ordinates to preserve the placidness of the worldly display, of fate to quarantine uncertainty variables, revealing the immediate probable and not affecting the divine order of the unforeseeable.

Note- The writing of this post is an after effect of the Olympic mystic (details here & here ), and for the final Olympic Fuwa prophecy, good slave believes is the reincarnation of the Jackson 5 divination… Can you feel it? good slave is ready!

MediocreCITY- City with no pride - 平庸城市

2008-06-16T01:03:00.015+08:00

What the hell is good slave doin’ here
Good slave doesn’t belong here…

You* made vows only to abjure
In a city with no pride
Your allegiances to immediate greed made you renounce to the world of pride and obligation
An exile to MediocreCITY
So forgive them God…

A vow is to belong,
A vow is to take pride of what you do,
A vow is to practice what you preach,
A vow is to be fucking special…

You** bash the gifted only to steal from them,
In a city with no pride, you stop to evolve
Never been committed but evasion of your duty to create
You** stop bashing once you’ve learnt to steal
A citizen of MediocreCITY
Never enlighten, never contribute, forever a conformist
So where is your pride?

Good slave must be a creep, a weirdo
Believing in perfect soul
Believing in the vow
An outcast of MediocreCITY
Good slave must gravitate
For the soul commit to higher vow…

You* refers to newly-appointed undersecretaries (details here & here)
You** refers to local architectural practitioners (details as below)

Design for new cultural district, Bao’an, Shenzhen, by Rocco Design Limited
Design for Opus, Dubai, by Zaha Hadid

The oath that our local appointed undersecretaries previously made-
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

The disaster takes care of everything

2008-05-21T16:32:00.012+08:00

The magnitude of disaster is congruous and harmonious with the intensity of architectural extremes that fit anything but themselves. At point fold of the fault where nature displaces the foundation of the very belief in architecture, a refuge from nature enfolds, eradicating life and city. The interior is a chamber of derangement, of anti-world- void-less, dark-less and faithful-less, where memories counterpart the disastrous loop, of the infinite returning future in the cosmic array of 成、住、壞、空. Disaster conglomerates to the multi-facet of the absolute where our desire illuminates, diminishes and simultaneously self-reflecting of this cosmic array.

Title-

a quote from "The writing of the Disaster" by Maurice Blanchot.

Yes we can 心中嘅一團火

2008-04-13T23:40:00.012+08:00

Voodoos are everywhere- the self-motivating slogans of “yes we can, just do it, impossible is nothing” are spells placed under our already hypnotic environment. Good slave believes that if one needs feeling-amplifier voodoo to empower one’s enthusiasm, one is most likely not an achiever or worst - failing but believing in the self-fulfilling prophecy. An achiever is possessed by passion only and practice is the only ritual he/she can offer. The religion of practice is to transgress from being the untrained to the trained, a charm that stands guard against all voodoos and not to bewitched by the subliminal slogans.

Despite saying that, good slave is overflowed with enthusiasm in reading the quotes by Randy Pausch (The last lecture) The feeling of high hopes that good slave believes shall be more promising when sharing with you the invisible audience…

“... the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people.”

“If you’re going to do anything that pioneering you will get those arrows in the back, and you just have to put up with it. I mean everything that could go wrong did go wrong. But at the end of the day, a whole lot of people had a whole lot of fun.”

“You obviously don’t know where the bar should be, and you’re only going to do them a disservice by putting it anywhere.”

Flat world

2008-04-10T14:31:00.013+08:00

The world is flat…

At the vast horizon, enterprises orchestrate the world supply chain, of networks competing networks/ aggregates empowering aggregates, of strategic alliances in defining the borderless flat world… The navigations of global trades accelerate the apocalypse phenomena. The logistic in global searches of best aggregates skyrocket the energy demand. Human and machine are now competing for food, turning corn into ethanol, a fuel that can replace gasoline and compete farmlands with livestock.

Commodity price rises and the dollar falls, at where the convergence of the flat leveraging world with the apocalyptic fear is the revelation for architecture… The seeding of architectural commodity is an in-situ activity, a field of crops-like enterprises driven by global variables. Orchestration is the soil from which the architectural seeding spring, of leveraging the global capacities and aligning with networking possibilities. Architecture synchronizes with the primordial anticipation and fluid enterprising. The crops-like seeding pulsates the global aggregates, in-situ communal desire and optimizes the robust global anticipation, creativity derived from this massive plantations and apocalyptic orchestrations.

References -

Competing In A Flat World by Victor K. Fung, William K. Fung and Yoram (Jerry) Wind

Territorial war

2008-02-16T15:26:00.025+08:00

Three days after good slave made the preaching on L in death note (New Year Resolution posted on 27 Jan 08), Hong Kong has become a site for the territorial war. Every citizen/non-citizen becomes a possible Kira to defend the last resort for free access of information (i.e. the internet).

First strike - the leakage of sex photos on the web, of rich star Edison Chen and a few starlets with naked postures and sexual act.
Second strike – police served warnings and arrested “anyone” who uploaded or kept any related photos. Many were arrested despite being the second tier distributors and police claimed to have captured the main source.
Third strike – Everyone became a potential Kira to led the war on cyberspace with the police and new photos on the web continue to surface.

The core of the incident is an age old war on territories among the have/have nots, public figure/general public. There are hundreds of private sex photos being uploaded on the internet daily, the police was alerted this time because the photos review the private life of the “have” while the “have not” not suppose to share. It is not about the obscenity that agitates the police, but the revealing of a general life style among the rich and famous. The arrest of chat room user was a retaliation on public by invading their cybernetic territories and Kira phenomena was the after effect that back fire the police, for any retaliation, more private photos to be revealed. The police took the role of Terminator, but only proven to be an obsolete machine. The general public is the cybernetic Kira T-1000, of no definite form nor identity, only perform fatal strikes to the authorities.

Remember the controversy paintings “Olympia & The Luncheon on the Grass” by Edouard Manet back in the 19th century? They agitated the bourgeois at that time because they led the general public to peek into their private life. Rather than being a naked Goddess (as in any conventional classical paintings), woman in there was naked only to be presented as any possible mistress for the bourgeois at that time. She gazed at the viewer (breaking the fourth wall) to flirt while enjoying the company with other males in the painting, a primordial form of Japanese AV idol and made Manet the avant garde of 19th century.

There is no bourgeois in Hong Kong, only rich and famous. Somehow they made belief to be living as bourgeois in a tabloid’s free 19th century society, and what’s remain private shall remain private under the privilege protection from the government… and that is fatal!

New Year resolution – pathologically speaking

2008-01-27T12:29:00.000+08:00

When there is a resolution, there will be commitment. For every commitment to be made, there will be a path. And for every pathological self obsesses with procedures, there is a habitual pattern. The truth is out there, nothing but repetitions of things/movements do we see the lights within.

L in “Death note” is possessed by the procedures of committing murders, neither the discovery of the Death Angel (the supernatural) nor any confession of murderers could satisfy L’s compulsion to the logic among procedures. The supernatural/Death Angel is imperfect, but the procedure that governs a murder is flawless. There is only a suspect (the writer) and the effect of the text (the way of killing in death note), the rewriting of the text and reconstructing the procedures that contributes to the killings are L’s tactics to make the writer reveal himself.

We practice the same path everyday & night, of the same notes and postures, for every repetition we fine tune we see the logic within. The abstractive habitual pattern (bubble diagram) breeds pathological effects, an infinite loop of returning and connecting functions in the absence of the formula “if return xxx times then….” Only endless feeding of functions among functions…

For New Year re-resolution, we can either choose to re-invent the wheel that brings us the protagonist self or simply look inside the microscopic logic of our daily notes/posture and activate the pathological healing process…

Like in yoga practices…Namaste

Fatality moves

2007-12-21T00:01:00.000+08:00

Writing script is like club dancing, purely for the spectacle, showing the world how fertile a perturbing form can be, all moves conglomerate to a “fatality” scenery – the ultimate attraction!

Everything seems like magic, you whisper “fatality” and the world follows. You command with a leverage point and with the flow of noise, the beat, the sexy form succumb to your specification.

For every word input, we await for wonders. A kind of agent-base arrangement with letters/symbols inserted into the black box/“fatality” that elicit wonders. Without the architectural dogma of drawing as representation of thoughts, scripting makes seductive moves and commands with the noise that brings forth the amazement.

Disclaimer- good slave does script.

Slaves are passionate

2007-11-15T23:37:00.000+08:00

Good slave loves the Cultural Revolution propaganda MV, despite being the biggest lie that fooled a record breaking number of slaves.
The display of will & passion is insurmountable.
The drive to be free from slavery is the “Black Swan” of the improbable.
The impact is immense.
The outlook to a future that the present will not accommodate, the emancipation is the passion that drives the “Black Swan” phenomena.
To be free is immanent and not limited by free will.
Passionately guided by the inevitable and fulfilling the “Black Swan” prophecy,
Slaves align oneself with the imminent, making their traces upon the immense impact.

The evil spell of Suzie Wong

2007-11-04T12:35:00.000+08:00

Once in a while at a dinner party, you would be stucked with an unknown encounter who happened to be an architectural designer. You asked about his views on local architecture (mainly for a start of conversations), and this often ended up being a monologue on feng shui and bamboo scaffolding. For the rest of the evening you would be hearing about how the locals grasped every opportunity to represent feng shui/bamboo scaffolding in their architectural thinking, from any international exhibits to local lectures, these were the “must do” theme to be recycled for decades. You might have wondered if there was life (or architecture in general) beyond feng shui/bamboo scaffolding or you being in a twilight zone listening to a primordial being babbling.

Things will evolve despite being mediocre. In recent years, the primordial beings were told that the most fashionable and politically correct term is “sustainability/preservation”. Since these are the new magic words to all things, the primordial beings are to find correspondence with their existing theme (i.e. feng shui/bamboo scaffolding) so as to continue their mediocracy. Therefore, you see bamboo decorations everywhere claiming to be sustainable in whatever aspect, and any types of additions to the historic context become justifiable instantaneously when under the name “preservation”.

In case Mr. Herzog & De Meuron are truly concern with the idea of “preservation” rather than “stereotyping”, good slave suggests they firstly to research more on the banality of these terms within the city context before inserting the gigantic bamboo-like scaffolding above the historic site (i.e. Central Police Station Compound) and claiming to conserve and revitalize (details here). In good slave opinion, building a bamboo-like scaffolding building at this day of age is no better than making a Suzie Wong movie back in the previous century.

Banality –
- Shall structures that imitate bamboo-like scaffolding be inherent properties of “nature, plants, transparency, the play of life and shadow” (as per Mr. Herzog & De Meuron claims)?
- By inserting “green areas, observation deck, public life accessible in the vertical dimension” that result a gigantic structure, shall such structure instantaneously be congruent to the principle of conversation?
- How does a local motif/icon (bamboo scaffolding/sampan/dim sum/triads society/Suzie Wong...etc) be of any significant that requires to be represented in a conservation project?

P.S. Previously in the media, many local architects had openly criticized the Sampan scheme for Hong Kong headquarter saying how it did not reflect Hong Kong as a metropolitan city and Casino façade alike… good slave wonder where are those brave critics now?

Quizás, Quizás, Quizás

2007-10-09T00:28:00.000+08:00

Perhaps you come to this blog everyday and without saying anything,
Perhaps knowing you were here, good slave keeps writing it,
Perhaps in return, good slave wants you to be good,
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

Perhaps good slave is special and see what the future holds,
Perhaps good slave believes the world to be a better place when you become rich,
Perhaps you may want to hold cash before others become poor,
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

Perhaps gold is what you love when everything drops,
Perhaps you shall let go before the New Year's Eve,
Perhaps you are tired of being rich and not believe this,
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…
Updates –
Hang Seng Index, 5/11/07, value 28,942.32, change -1526.02 (day drop record high)
Gold, 5/11/07, 810 USD per oz (record high in 28 years)

《色•戒》《Masturbate • Not》

2007-10-07T22:44:00.000+08:00

There are many ways to masturbate. For film, the thoughtless transposing of abstractive writings to picturesque scenes, replacing the intensified monologue with intense sex, without the strife of words, of reflections coming closer to the world apart but only representations of bodily fantasy.

Foreword by 張愛玲 Eileen Chang sharing her thoughts on writing 惘然記-

極簡單扼要地顯示文藝的功用之一：讓我們能接近否則無法接近的人。
For abstractive functions in art: to get closer to whom we cannot get close to.

在文字的溝通上，小說是兩點之間最短的距離。

In the communication of words, novel is the closest distance in between two points.

In 張愛玲 Eileen Chang’s writing, her microscopic detailing of the external world is derived from a contemplative dimension, an inner projection of a distancing world that inflate doubts and conflicts, neither a picturesque reminiscent of the past nor narratives of places… rather an agitator that speaks from a turmoil present, a truth elicitor from a disorderly world. On one hand, the powerful monologue of 王佳芝 questioned every reflections of her encounter, of what seemingly righteous act had rotten long after the primordial instinct took over, and on the other hand, 王佳芝 strife for the rational behind the sinful encounter and with delicate thoughts and sensitivities. The powerful monologue situates oneself inside the eye of a whirling world, her reflections and sensitivities are outlook for higher belief and lightness. In the film 《色·戒》"Lust Caution", the monologue was removed along with 王佳芝 reflections, the remains were places/objects of empty signs devoid of signification, with rubbles of historic images awaiting to be romanticized.

When sex becomes a deceitful weapon, passion weigh down on betrayal, only with an intent that levitates us from an irreparable world, of intense fulfillment in the passage of weighing & levitating. In《色·戒》, 張愛玲 describe the bodily encounter of 王佳芝 and 易先生 as such -

事實是，每次跟老易在一起都像洗了個熱水澡，把積鬱都沖掉了，因為一切都有了個目的。
In fact, every time when being with Mr. Yi, it feels like having a hot bath and getting rid of all burdens, it is because everything began to have an intent.

Disappointingly but expected, the film maker of 《色·戒》"Lust Caution" translates the text into trilogy of sexual encounter, which often associated with Hollywood film genre -

1st encounter – Sadism and Masochism or SM sex… to show Mr. Yi frustration with himself of being a traitor and the mistrust with 王佳芝 that led her to become a sex object.
2nd encounter – The display of various sexual posture in reference to Karma Sutra or 春宮圖… to demonstrate their affection and enjoyment when 王佳芝 began to earn Mr. Yi trust.
3rd encounter – Intense sex… to show Mr. Yi and 王佳芝 being in love with each other.

When things become literal, it is mediocre. There seem to have a lot more to learn for the film maker about the ambiguous role in the display of passion, love and sexual encounter. Nagisa Oshima would have taught the film maker that these roles were to be interchangeable, of a reversal order as “in the realm of senses” that had manifolds of intensity than the formulated Hollywood conventions… Sadism and Masochism are not meant to objectify the sexual counterpart, rather the merging as oneness conglomerates the composites of eroticism…and love/passion not necessary progresses in linear fashion from (rough>tender) sex.

Lastly, there were a few commentators/film critics here who highly praised about the movie in a very explicit manner… phrases like “Ang Lee had re-incarnated Eileen Chang’s soul… the scene was realistically generated in finest detail that was good for reminiscent of the old shanghai and Hong Kong … only European would know how to appreciate the love in the fallen city and not Americans especially the Californians…etc” Accord with good slave classifications, those are called hyper-masturbation, i.e. masturbating while watching other masturbating.

And good slave honestly believe 張愛玲 Eileen Chang’s would have shared the same view too.

Thank-you for your tenderness 謝謝你如此溫柔

2007-09-26T22:39:00.001+08:00

Feeling aloft is great especially when you are inside the mega-shopping atrium. You turn around at mid-point of an expressway escalator that takes you from G/F to n/F. The scenery is spectacular, a reeling sensation running aloft the horizon.

At vanishing point, you see city gurus doing the atmananda sequences behind the glassy facades covered with sweaty mist, simmering inside and with glimmering lights for navigation of the atmananda sequences. At viewing of their sun salutations, postures become your guiding lights to ascend at higher altitude…

At the sides, you look out to the tranquil cityscape – Portland st. A red light district that had passed its’ hay days, with a few remains of “3-tasty massage, fresh school girls, part-time housewife, Russian Blondie…” signage, twinkling like a constellation around those magnet store advertisements (nokia, slim-fast, H&M)… at where the facades of the old district had been “resurfaced” for installation of multi-storey high posters and flooded with metal halides, dedicating the white nights experience to the neighbors in case their windows have not yet been blessed by the magnet store advertisments coverage.

At the midst of feeling serene, tenderness and reassurance, you look up to the starry night of a digital projection (the atrium ceiling) while being overwhelmed with gratitude from the voice of 山口百恵「さよならの向こう側」. A return of the lost Portland st. tenderness in resonant with the MV played by the mega plasma under your feet-

何億光年

輝く星にも

寿命があると

教えてくれたのは

あなたでした

季節ごとに咲く

一輪の花に

無限の命

知らせてくれたのも

last song for you

約束なしのお別れです

今度はいつと言えません

あなたの燃える手

あなたの口づけ

あなたのぬくもり

あなたのすべてを

きっと私忘れません

後姿みないで下さい

Thank you for your kindness

Thank you for your tenderness

Thank you for your smile

Thank you for your love

Thank you for your everything

さよならのかわりに

眠れないほどに

思い惑う日々

熱い言葉で

支えてくれたのは

時として一人

くじけそうになる

心に夢を

与えてくれたのも

涙をかくしお別れです

いつものように

さり気なく

あなたの呼びかけ

あなたの喝采

あなたのやさしさ

後姿みないでゆきます

1408

2007-09-19T23:47:00.000+08:00

We take many things for granted in this world, especially for architecture. We assume the world to remain at every moment we turn our back behind… Walls, windows, doors shall be stationed and awaited for our next time around to remember, of the forgotten past in truthful display, always being purposeful and never betray our memory.

At 1408, Stephen King called it “evil” when the world behind stop being "there" for us and where architecture starts to transgress when we passed through.

Blackbird

2007-09-05T00:22:00.000+08:00

Please note: the photo shown above is Pill, seated, appears with Jeff Daniels in David Harrower's play Blackbird at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York. (Joan Marcus/Manhattan Theatre Club) and NOT the cast from Hong Kong.

Background –
Two years ago David Harrower's devastating play Blackbird thrilled and shocked audiences at the Edinburgh International Festival. This controversial production, directed by the legendary German director Peter Stein wowed the critics and transferred to London where it won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Hong Kong audiences will now have the chance to see the play's Asia premiere directed by Toronto's Jovanni Sy and starring one of Canada's leading stage performers Ashley Wright alongside Hong Kong's award-winning actress and director Bonni Chan. Blackbird is a brilliantly written, powerful and provocative two-hander about the reunion of a middle-aged man and a woman, with whom he had a sexual relationship when she was twelve years old. The man was sent to jail and on his release assumed a new identity and began rebuilding his life. Fifteen years have passed. She has thought of nothing else and on discovering a photo of him in a trade magazine, she sets out to find him, with shattering consequences.

-by Theatre du Pif

Good slave had finally gotten to see David Harrower’s Blackbird for the Asia premiere, with such an intriguing and brave story line, good slave had very high expectations - The devastation of being in an unforgiving love, the manifestation of the dissent and foreseeing its catastrophic nature… the returning of the perpetrator-victim chain and passionately bind together, with ephemeral joy in every recollections and doubts, love imprint upon the pathological self…

When good slave is in ecstasy (having high hopes) as in love, good slave writes scribbles as above and it normally ends in devastation. Good slave had walked into a disastrous site, a masterpiece of writing eradicated by weak casting. The over-exaggerated acting, with intentional jittering of speeches and purposeless gesture/facial expressions, conversations became lost soul drifting and loosing its pivoting depth. In the midst of rubbles (i.e. conversations), good slave was in despair. During the attempt to reconstruct David Harrower’s glory from the ruins, “the writing of disaster” by Maurice Blanchot came to good slave mind. Good slave was staring at the words displayed inside the subtitle box, and trying to replace speeches with words, a solemn silence replaced the living presence... until the reconstructions from those traces (written words from the subtitle box) became certain divinity that spoke from the absence, the oracle revealed itself - the glory of David Harrower’s writing, of silencing of background noises (jittering speeches from the actress) that filled the lost soul with hope and abyss…

Director’s Notes -
What drew me to Blackbird is the bravery of David Harrower’s writing.

If you were to put one hundred adults from anywhere in the world together in one room, it is overwhelmingly likely that all one hundred-regardless of race, age, gender, or political philosophy – world agree that the sexualization of children is morally reprehensible. Yet in the face of this, David Harrower takes one of the last taboo subjects and dares to question what we almost unanimously hold to be true.

Harrower succeeds in doing this by refusing to make Blackbird an “issue play”. With this subject matter, it would be all-too-simple to write a morality take. But Harrower steadfastly refuses to give his characters easy labels; no one is evil or innocent, perpetrator or victim.

In fact, Harrower hasn’t written a play about child abuse at all. Blackbird is an achingly painful love story between two damaged souls. Abuse just happens to be the incident that binds them irrevocably. Harrower neither condemns nor condones their past actions. He is more concerned with exploring the complexities of the human heart. He asks if it possible for a middle-aged man to truly love a child.

But it is not enough for Harrower to challenge conventional wisdom. Just as we, the audience, are gaining new perspectives on the nature of love, Harrower subverts our expectations once again in a shocking, visceral manner.

It’s not merely the subject matter that makes Blackbird such a brave piece of writing. With his Spartan verse, Harrower strips his characters bare. Blackbird is a masterful layering of codified language. At the start of the start of the play, Ray and Una first address each other with carefully rendered masks of normalcy. By the play’s end, old wounds are reopened, fifteen years’ worth of bottled-up rage and hurt are brought to surface. Blackbird demands that its actors expose their deepest fears and insecurities for all to see.

-by Jovanni Sy

Apocalypse Now 一念天堂,一念地獄

2007-08-25T21:56:00.000+08:00

17th Aug07 was the ultimate judgment day, investors were caught in between polar (of the US sub-prime mortgage financial crisis vs. New policy of mainlanders free to trade Hong Kong stock through designated bank in Tianjin) and experienced the deepest V curve (or point fold) ever unfolded in Hong Kong stock trade. At the point where you saw the world was about to fall apart with some flickering lights surrounded by darkness, you doubted whether those lights were hallucination suffered from previous deep plunges or signs from angels in revelation. In the midst of vanishing world vs. the possible point of return, full of agony and unbearable suffering, an ultimate decision had to be made “to buy or not to buy”. Neither data nor analytical studies were available to support your decision, was a simple yes/no answer coming from your primordial instinct… Result - “You buy you win big, you sell you regret for as long as you are down and out in the stock market”

Due to the sub-prime mortgage financial crisis, the stock market worldwide had been in turmoil since the beginning of the month, but nothing compare with such apocalyptical atmosphere on 17th Aug07.

In the morning, Hang Seng Index (HSI) dropped from 20,600 to 19,995 which was the yearly range of increase for 2007. After lunch, the plunge began, starting at -300 points and within 15 minutes it dropped further 600 points with a total daily drop of 1286 points. While the world seemingly came to an end, the point folds began, and within an hour HSI shot up 600 points and closed at 20,387.13. Daily fluctuation ranged from 19,386.72 - 20,761.31

The first part of the apocalypse was conducted by the foreign hedge fund managers who started pulling out money from Hong Kong which led to the landslide. The second part was the taking over from china investors (as rumors say) that levitated us to higher grounds of hope. Since then, the following week, every morning had an open bid of +10% for those who wanted to re-enter the game, a kind of ecstasy pills for empathy, love, heightening self-awareness to an aftershock from last Friday. The stock market then turned into a Russian roulette, every bet you placed was a step closer to another possible landslide, but the enjoyment of near death experience made one to overcome the aftershock awareness and seemingly to live life twice!

The event reminded good slave of the movie “Killing Fields & Deer Hunter”. The pulling out of American troops and the taking over by the communist, the heightening of the apocalyptic atmosphere where life turned into betting chips, no room for any thoughts, we live for every moment in life through yes-no, winning-losing, life-death intermingles together …

For architecture, professionals have been simple-minded in accepting given data for distribution of the architectural program. Neither are the sources being investigated nor are the intentions of such data revealed to public being questioned. Curves or bar charts are simply drawn to extrapolate the future growth and resulting programs portend to accommodate future needs. Architects have been fed by developers with pseudo data, while being part of the propagandizing campaign, work produced are made believe to serve the public needs.

However for smart investors, they treat data in a very different manner - data revealed are considered as psychological aspect of the public. A reflection of intentions, of people in power desire for the future and the way they want the public to desire the same accordingly. The apocalyptic atmosphere, heaven and hell experiences, the heightening of human emotions are all artificially created delusions of a controlled future. Investors postulate the future by interpolation, the filling up of the gap in between now and the speculate intentions of those in power. The more polar forces lead to chaos, the more certainty for investors to make future by seeing what’s behind those pseudo data.

An Islamic puzzle

2007-08-19T14:21:00.000+08:00

Good slave was in Malaysia (being one of the popular resort for the Islamic community) enjoying the vacation hot spot with strangers from the Far East. While taking the plane from Langkawi to Kuala Lumpur, good slave encountered an Islamic puzzle which kept good slave pondered along the trip. Since the global business works with generic models, the puzzle intrigued good slave for its spatial/mathematical implications to our supposedly highly efficient-base/protocol system, a kind of gems affection that resulted in a 20 minutes of delay.

The puzzle as follows –
- The seating arrangement of the economy class is a minima/maxima model of efficiency. Accommodations, circulation spaces, human bodies and luggage are all intertwined within the same formula of efficiency in “filling” up with the volume.
- When bodies and machines become intimate, it will be inevitable to have physical contact among bodies (whether to be sitting or maneuvering inside the plane).
- According to the Sharia Law, one would not touch women whom are not his "mahram" (guardians).
- So, when the plane is filled up with good followers of Allah Almighty and non-Muslim, the situation becomes difficult. Some Muslim couples will be seated in between non-Muslim males, and some non-corporative-non-Muslim males may consider consumer rights are more important than respecting other’s culture and refuse to switch seats.

Then how do we solve the puzzle without any segregation among Muslims and non-Muslims? Good slave is sure that such confusions are common and figures may become astronomical once we add up the total time of delay worldwide. Shall we avoid even number of seats per roll? Or Non-Muslim male shall get the window seats? How do we balance out the efficient packing models to avoid delay of flight?

The distancing among bodies and bodily movement vs. efficient programming has been an age-old question for architects. However, at current years, we are very fascinated with global generic models that we seem to intertwine with the organic and the non-organic under the name of efficiency. The delay in flight schedule reflects the distancing among human bodies and their postures defines the generic models and the “otherness” is always a good gem in fine tuning of the system.

p.s. while sitting in the plane waiting for the situation to be resolved, a westerner next to good slave was concerned about the Islamic women being forced to cover up the body in public (accord with Sharia Law). However, in good slave opinion, our women are no better since everywhere we are bombarded with images imposed by the media of how women shall “expose” their body in public (with having less dress), every parts of the body has a required measurement along with a price tag to achieve those standard (either by plastic surgery, laser treatment, botox, slim fast diet). Is this taming of the male gaze as in Manet Eduoard – Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe or simply capitalization of women’s body?

Midsummer Night’s Dream 熱情的沙漠

2007-07-27T01:46:00.000+08:00

Good slave is becoming a zombie for drifting hopelessly at this torrid desert place called Hong Kong. Since the introduction of QDII policy in April07, Hong Kong has been a reservoir for the overflowing money from the North. Money is hot and here for action, every player is having multiple orgasms after orgasms with the China H share and stock analyses become protocols reminding your “lost self” of what to do at the midst of these frenzies. As the wise man say, day high, volume, dividends, earnings per share…etc are patterns of emotions to derive protocols of reminders for the “lost self”. We made ourselves believe to be a rational being by looking at charts for predictions/extrapolations, however, this only lead to more mysteries behind the mask of mega zombie (China H share)…

We zoom in and out from macro to micro, yearly>monthly>daily>hourly charts only to find out multiple layers of functional curves that governs the human emotional behavior. Sometimes are noise curves, sometimes are sin curves with some random spikes in between and most of the time are mixture of chaos + step functions. Each aura of curve/pattern governs individual periodic charts and very much the same of what we see in nature of things, as the nobelist Richard Feynman once said...

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
People say to me, "Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?" No, I'm not... If it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it — that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers... then that's the way it is.

Then, what’s the answer to all this? Surveys said before any stock crash in history, 99% of the financial analysts would say prospect of the stock market was good… in that case, good slave advises listen to no one but your feng shui master whom has more creditability (of course, relatively speaking) and let the natural force “gold, wood, water, fire, earth” to guide you out of this torrid mysteries.

A reflection on 清明上河圖

2007-07-22T18:38:00.000+08:00

Since the national treasure 清明上河圖 was discovered at a bank somewhere north of China 50+ years ago, the exhibition (the pride of china) in Hong Kong will be the second time of the painting being revealed to the public (first was at shanghai). Good slave was lucky enough to be part of limited crowd who were given the 5 minutes viewing of this stunting piece of work. Good slave is no art critic nor art historian, however, being blessed by this opportunity of viewing the Song city being re-animated some 1000 years after, like any encounter of rare celestial alignment, I owe the author 張擇端 a reflection.

The 5m long script are compartmentations of series of axonometric lines projected from architectural artifacts. A view is constructed neither by linear perspectives (as in renaissance) nor 2d flattening (as in Egyptian art), rather a mental constructed lines of analytical viewing, fully articulated and intensively informative and in conjunction with free curves outlining the natural landscape/figures, the work is beyond documentation but an expression of the world of mass, noises, gestures, figures, signs, symbols, of axonometric constructed lines partitioning with the undulating curves… every figure (or particles) is about a few millimeters of a micro world in itself> the lines outline the postures> the postures outline the social status of the figures> the social status of figures outline the function of the surrounding artifacts> the details of the artifacts project axonometric lines to partition the macro world… the bridge becomes an eventful artifact connecting the worlds apart along the river and its underside, figures engage in trading activities along the periphery and extending their postures beyond for potential encounter… scaffoldings are pointing outwards from the core to construct architecture inside out… the script is re-animated with such intensity, infinitesimal detailing and many many more for good slave to learn within a 5 minutes interval…

Good bye, Edward! 再見,楊德昌

2007-07-09T00:51:00.000+08:00

... and thanks for bringing all the wonderful works to this world.

Good slave loves your 牯嶺街少年殺人事件(A Brighter Summer Day), a true contemplation of André Bazin writings with traces of reality unfold on screen from an idling point of view, the off-the-screen actions left us pondering with jitters and the filmic expressions weighing upon us into your world of serenity and violence…
and most important of all, the gal whom Honey loved reminds good slave of first love and good slave believe you share the some feeling too.

Keep up with the good works in heaven!

What turns you on?

2007-07-02T21:55:00.000+08:00

A city has at least 3-4 times a year of large fire works + daily light show with mini fire works along the harbour at every 8:00 p.m… the main theme for the events were templates since 1997 as such -“the celebration of prosperities of Hong Kong for the return to homeland of People’s Republic of China… being in harmony… unity of people & nation…etc, etc, etc…”

Or...

Following the massive success in Sydney and London (details here), a Lights Out event to invite citizens to turn off the lights for one hour and to draw the world attention of the climate changes. The Lights Out events require cooperation among citizens and most importantly their awareness of the precious resource in this world.

The Lights Out events turn good slave on (mainly for aesthetic reasons). The appreciation of silent and shades of darkness, a surreal experience (as in the movie Paris Qui Dort) at the midst of natural rendering of darker/lighter shades of pale which are many folds more seductive than the artificial fireworks display.

A city with pride and imagination do not need constant celebrative events, nor yearly routing of the children mass (total no. broke the Guinness record) to perform tricks for the symbol of unity, only at a tyrannical state where we see massive propaganda shows for this kind of perpetuating self-reassurance.

What’s IN & OUT

2007-06-22T23:20:00.001+08:00

Hong Kong is No:1 of the world in many aspect –

1 of the highest ratio in {civil servants: civilians}.
1 of the highest paid for civil servants.
1 of the largest portion of the civil servant in the government expenditure.
1 of the smallest ratio per civil servant serving meters square.

but, when it comes to building their own home (i.e. government headquarters, details here), these civil servants decided to out source the managing task to the contractors whom would select the architectural designers and eventually to decide on the new iconic image for Hong Kong.
In many countries, this will become the international events for open/invited architectural design competitions, exhibits, gathering public opinions, seeking authorities for advice, open debate and so on… however, our civil servants decide to conduct a design & build contract for a supposedly important building, a procurement which the architects have no say in the process but to serve the contractors (a few owned by developers) and the public has no choice but to stuck with the 4 contractors’ design…

And even more surprisingly, when architects were given an opportunity to voice out, their comments were disappointingly tabloid and QS(quantity surveyor) like, quote from South China Morning Post, Sunday, June 17, 2007 –

Vincent Ng Wing-shun, former vice president of the Hong Kong Institute of Architecture -
-“It is clearly an outdated image of Hong Kong. A sailing boat can no longer represent the city”.
- “Door design would be more expensive than “sailing boat”.
- “the gaps between the two sides of the block are quite wide and it will definitely cost more to build the supporting block across the middle”

An architect, who declined to be named –
- “This design might not use floor space efficiently”.
- “If one bureau is based on one side of the ‘door’ and the other on the other side, then staff have to go up to the top or down to the bottom to get to see each other… and this design means you will not have a big open space on each floor.”

The head of architecture at the University of Hong Kong, Leslie Lu -
- “door” design would be more expensive… a design that is out of the ordinary costs more”

In tune with their layman’s talk, here is the real deal from good slave –

- The “door” is rather a “economic” version of CCTV headquarters (by OMA). By colouring one of the tower in black, it achieves similar results at bird's eye view and need not to worry about the additional cost for unconventional structural implications.

- “door” design is even more outdated! From La Nouvelle Arche > Umeda Sky Building > every now and then you would see some “lite” version proposed somewhere at China.
- The locations of the government headquarters have been very strategic in history, mainly for the control of crowds – limited access + limited gathering space. The existing location at central is a good example where the HK government can learn from their previous British boss.

The “door” scheme invites massive demonstrations and provides them with a sea-view + cross ventilation, be easily surrounded by demonstrators approach from from all sides - good for “長毛", bad for Donald Tsang.

In this regards, good slave is in full support of 'door' scheme.

I keep on fallin’ in … and out…

2007-06-19T00:38:00.000+08:00

Good slave loves Ngong Ping skyrail for a number of reasons despite its recent incident of cabin plunged 50m to the ground. (details here & here)

It’s a rare skyrail design where cabins can make turns at the transitional station for every point fold of the terrain below. The deserted interior of the transitional station is fantastic, reminds good slave of the slaughter house design… fully automated with robotic device moving the hanging cabins around, sitting inside being levitated and awaiting to be projected out onto the spectacular landscape, and be hovered above every point fold of the terrian.

but, the most important of all - despite all the feng shui masters' warnings not to build at Lantau Island, some designers took the challenge and present the public a spectacular way of viewing the island. Some say there is a price to pay for challenging the mysterious force of feng shui (constant mechanical failure + plunging 50m),

However as to compare with some design institution at the other part of the town who constantly preaching “architecture to follow feng shui” (by writing articles “feng shui in architecture + lecture series “architecture in feng shui” for the past decades), the price being paid is insignificant.

Why? In the view of the public, those preachers are falling in and out of the feng shui spells since it becomes an institutional sound bite, their works has much ado about nothing except being “bad taste” (examples here)

Disclaimer – good slave is not against feng shui, but there are more profound principles in architecture that govern the habitat than this pseudo-non-progressive belief.

Umm… MANDOM

2007-06-08T23:31:00.000+08:00

How to proclaim fame when you consider yourself -

@ 40+ successful architect and nothing stands in your way
@ constant “play with time management” due to busy schedule
@ no.xxx largest company in Hong Kong and no.xxx largest company in the world
@ least 30+ nos of committee memberships belong to different clubs/civil services.
@ crossroad (after you make yourself a one flower party “一枝花生日會”) when looks becomes a concern to match your global success.

@ extract from Next Magazine issue no.900 pg.32,33 Mence Advertisment or click at the pictures below for details

Then...

be a spoke person for Menace and state all the facts there @ the testimonial section!

For some reason, this came across good slave mind -

"The Code of Professional Conduct, HKIA Guidelines for the Promotion of Professional Services” –
3.0 Principles on the form of promotion
3.1 A Member shall not make generalized claim as regards size or quality of his practice or projects. Comparative or superlative term shall not be used, except in a measurable manner.
3.2 A Member shall not either directly or by implication, make a comparison of his own practice with other member’s practice.
3.3 The contents of the practice promotion shall not be ostentatious, onerous nor in a manner derogatory to the dignity or reputation of the institute or the architectural profession.
3.4 No fee rate nor charges shall be publicized within the promotion contents.

However, in good slave heart, there is only one code of practice-
All the world loves a lover. All the world loves MANDOM.

The works define an architect and nothing else.

Do not fall for the same prank twice!

2007-06-06T22:39:00.000+08:00

For those who entered the West Kowloon Reclamation Concept Plan Competition at 2002 (Integrated Arts, Cultural and Entertainment District) and lost, later on routed up some cultural crowd to oppose the idea of the competition itself… Please do not fall for the same prank this time! (details here)

The following is their monkey logic…
By landfilling our valuable waterfront for more roads and skyscrapers, they claim to -

Reducing the wall effect of single large developments,^
Greater visual permeability,^
Reducing traffic generation,*
Reducing air and noise pollution,*
A more competitive business environment,
Increased diversity and vibrancy.

*Less water and more roads > attract more traffic into the district > more congestions > more air and noise pollution >...

^Good slave is curious how building more skyscrappers at the rim of the city will reduce wall effect and provide greater visual permeability?

Whenever government find hard to convince themselves or the general public for some wicked act, they usually look for some foreign representatives to do the PR work, and by conducting international competition is one cheap way to do so.

Same prank, same wicked thoughts!

Disclaimer: Good slave did not enter any West Kowloon Reclamation Concept Plan Competition nor participate any related activities. Good slave only convinced others not to fall for the said prank by not entering the competitions at that time, however, was being labelled as "cultural snob" since then.

www.truth-light.org.hk 明光社 – Truth Lite or Truth Zero

2007-05-27T13:44:00.000+08:00

The devil has many facets, most commonly in disguised are under "the name of God".

The story of devil @ work -

Government awarded the tender for the teaching of human rights course for the primary/ secondary school teachers to a group that –

Has a history of discriminating sexual minorities,
Against legal protection for sexual minorities,
Protest on public televisions for covering gay issues,
With no record of teaching of human rights in Hong Kong,
Declaring truth-light.org is not a religious group but claiming all things in Bible are historical fact.

Some kids are more fortunate in countries where concepts of liberty, human rights, freedom had been well defined by their founding fathers. Here kids are less fortunate where the nation was found on a pseudo all-in-one system, with the degree of one’s right being in pro-rata basis on amount of one’s work-done (i.e. pseudo socialism) and where their primary/secondary teachers will be fed by this 100% rubbish from the Truth Lite organization -

'… people only focus on individual rights and overlook responsibilities and duties to society.’
'…advocates of extreme liberal ideals often use human rights to challenge the traditional social system.’
'… help educators understand the true meaning of human rights.’

Instead of taking some pseudo courses organized by Hong Kong governmental bodies, here is good slave and some other fellow architects recommended sources for the Hong Kong teachers, wish that would be informative -

John Stuart mill - on liberty

Rousseau - social contract

Hegel - elements of the philosophy of right

Kant - critiques...

David Hume - treatise of human nature

John Locke - concerning human understanding

Hobbes - leviathan

Marx - capital

Rawls - theory of justice

Russell - authority and the individual
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Giorgio Agamben' - of the moment
Montesquieu on separation of powers
Thoreau on civil disobedience.
Descartes - meditations

Spinoza - ethics

Deleuze and Guattari - 1000 plateaus / anti-oedipus

Jean Baudrillard - forget Foucault

Zizek - against human rights
Auguste Blanqui
Montaigne – essays
Antisthenes

Diogenes of Sinope

Max Stirner

Wilhelm Reich

Ema Goldman

Bakunin

Kropotkin

Proudhon
Plato

Nietzsche

Leibniz

In some countries, a number of the major figures listed above are mandatory subject as part of the education to become an architect. Since Hong Kong education has been a breeding ground for future serving of the developer’s greed and with no question asked, then what will become later?

Architects designing concentration campus for the minorities?... and with the same excuse they use to defend themselves of designing poor buildings when confronted by the public –

"don’t blame me, blame the system, we are just following orders from the government/developer” … however, that very much sounded like any defense you hear in those convictions of war trails.

Good slave is sorry for making this post a bit long and boring, here are some images from where you find more "rights to display human" than human right itself.

In the mood for love

2007-05-20T00:45:00.000+08:00

Outraging/unforgiving survey by Chinese University Students!
A survey on eroticism was conducted without any tipping to the general public on *desirable places for sex* except one - the campus which end up 4 out of 5 replies found it sexually not arousing... and this is very unforgiving for architects. (details here and here)

**technically speaking- 打野戰 or architecturally speaking- habitual de-territorization

一：你唔覺得做愛好悶既咩？

二：你唔覺得做愛好煩咩？最煩係d乜野？

三：你會唔會幻想過同阿爸阿媽兄弟姐妹做愛？（無論細個或而家都得！）

四：你有冇裝過佢地沖涼、換衫、自慰、做愛？

五：在街上什麼人（或動物／東西）最能挑起你的慾望？

六：你有冇幻想同朋友男朋友或女朋友做過愛？

七：如果有，你點樣處理你同你死黨同佢男或女朋友既幻想？

八：定係實現左幻想，咁你又點樣處理？

九：你自慰／打飛機時會諗住邊個？

十：你最想同咩動物做愛？

十一：你覺得一次過同幾多男幾多女做愛係最好（optimal／最理想）？

十二：你最想係中大邊度做愛？

答1：有適合gei地方咩，唔覺

答2：可以睇到吐露港景色又唔會有人望住的地方，大家有冇好介紹？

答3：對地方冇咩fetish總之室內有床o既私人空間咪得

答4：我係中大好多度地方都做過，無咩新地方好吸引好想再去，有去過既就…唔…都係無咩特別好吸引。如果有$都係去賓館好玩d，因為可以多d時間慢慢諗下睇下點做又可以傾下計又可以一齊食野做下食下又可以一齊沖涼…

答5：一路都想偷偷地走入lecture theatre攪，d 位又舒服，仲要攪到污糟晒果隻，等人唔知乜事坐上去

十三：你覺唔覺得宿舍唔俾男女過夜係歧視異性戀？十四：有冇因為性生活問題（又唔講出來）而影響愛情？

Eroticism is indexical to architecture since the primodial habitat appeared on this planet, the space of violence/desire/dissident and the object of desire evolve as oneness in eroticism*…

*The cave paintings (between 15,000 and 13,000 BC) > Greek classical order (decorations representing sexual organs)> the baroque (the chambers of secrets)> avante garde (the incestral & the uncanny space) > postmodern (the sex on display)> now anything but cybersex…

Then, how does architecture fade away from kids' sexual fantasy, of their imaginations to a mood that defines eroticism?

Has our education system been sterilized to an extent with no eroticism, no mood, just intercourse studies??
or
Has Hong Kong architecture been demoted to empty signs and devoid of erotic mood to the general public since long after the "big split" (architectural space<>object of desire) in our architectural education? ?

Here is good slave recommend reading list for our educator to revisit and to save our children's imaginations-

Colomina Beatrix writings on gender spaces.
A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick.
Stud, Architecture of Masculinity, edit by Joel Sanders
The Metastases of Enjoyment by Slavoj Zizek
Read my Desire, Lacan against the Historicists, by Joan Copjec
Encyclopaedia Acephalica by George Bataille
La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini

Ulysses by James Joyce

Henry James

Edgar Allan Poe
紅樓夢
花樣年華 - 黃家衛

傾城之戀, 張愛玲
愈快樂愈墮落 - 關錦鵬

and many many more…

警告：以下反中大問卷人仕說話內容或其猙獰咀臉可能令人反感，不可將本物品派發、傳閱、出售、出租、交給或出借予思想開放的人士或將本物品向該等人士出示、播放或放映.

If you love somebody, set them free

2007-05-13T10:41:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong has been noisy again on the issue of queen’s pier (noise here, here and here). This round more unnecessary sound bites added in support of HKIA’s stance on the issue (The Hong Kong Institute of Architects, details here) –
Its stance to the “In-situ Preservation” of Queen's Pier

What does “In-situ Preservation” preserve in the process of mummifying a piece of architecture? For preservation of collective memory, axial alignment, “sense of place" as highly praised in the midst of sound bites?

Sense of place -
A pier being mummified with concrete-shoe (in mafia’s term) is deemed to end its “being” of a pier along with its atmospheric conditions (i.e. sense of place) whether it is in-situ or not.
In Heidegger’s notion of “Building Dwelling Thinking” -

The dam forces the river to be what we want. It "enframes" it, makes it into something that is useful to us on our terms. The dam makes the river into hydro-electric power, and makes it into "standing reserve", or an abstraction ("energy") which is there for our use.

Thing-in-itself evolves with building, dwelling and thinking, mummification is a representation of “being” and not preserve the “being” in itself of any previous notion of a pier or any sense of place.

Axial alignment –
The spine that holds the queen’s pier complex together is the line of voids (a more appropriate architectural term for classical ideals, detail please refer to Palladio’s work) starts from Statue Square> Edinburgh Place > Star Ferry Pier > ad infinitum (i.e. water front), once the vanishing point of this line of voids been broken/blocked by future developments (i.e. luxurious residential towers, commercial skyscrapers), the remaining parts of the subsidiary axis (city hall>queen’s pier> Edinburgh Place etc) serves no meaning of its origin whether they align with any higher form of terrestrial/celestial objects.

Collective memory -
Architecture evokes memories with many aspects – replacement/displacement, disappearance/appearance, transparencies/opaque, dislodgement/cohabitate… The belief “to in-situ in order to preserve” is rather wishful thinking or being least imaginative to mummify a building while the surroundings being eradicated drastically by greed and thoughtless authorities.

Examples of imaginative "preservations" here, documentaries soon appear on CNN and BBC.

逆光 against the light

2007-05-05T17:47:00.000+08:00

孫燕姿我懷念的

我問為什麼那女孩傳簡訊給我而你為什麼不解釋低著頭沉默我該相信你很愛我不願意敷衍我還是明白你已不想挽回什麼想問為什麼我不再是你的快樂可是為什麼卻苦笑說我都懂了自尊常常將人拖著把愛都走曲折假裝了解是怕真相太赤裸裸狼狽比失去難受我懷念的是無話不說我懷念的是一起作夢我懷念的是爭吵以後還是想要愛你的衝動我記得那年生日也記得那一首歌記得那片星空最緊的右手最暖的胸口誰記得誰忘了想問為什麼我不再是你的快樂可是為什麼卻苦笑說我都懂了自尊常常將人拖著把愛都走曲折假裝了解是怕真相太赤裸裸狼狽比失去難受我懷念的是無話不說我懷念的是一起作夢我懷念的是爭吵以後還是想要愛你的衝動我記得那年生日也記得那一首歌記得那片星空最緊的右手最暖的胸口誰忘了我懷念的是無言感動我懷念的是絕對炙熱我懷念的是你很激動求我原諒抱得我都痛我記得你在背後也記得我顫抖著記得感覺洶湧最美的煙火最長的相擁誰愛的太自由誰過頭太遠了誰要走我的心誰忘了那就是承諾誰自顧自地走誰忘了看著我誰讓愛變沉重誰忘了要給你溫柔 Woo Oh~~我懷念的是爭吵以後還是想要愛你的衝動我記得那年生日也記得那一首歌記得那片星空最緊的右手最暖的胸口我放手我讓座假灑脫誰懂我多麼不捨得太愛了所以我沒有哭沒有說

The format of the lyrics reminds me the making of ancient Chinese scripture – In ancient time, man made the sentences and his maid* inserted punctuations in between for completion. In the other words, the maid was his quasi-muse and her task was to read the master-mind.
*The maid being a domestic virgin serving the writer was also believed to be the origin of Chinese prostitution.

Since good slave is only slave to passion not love, I suppose this may also applies to love relations where men sporadically make the scenes and women add “: - . , ? !” to the relations to create her own loving logic. In architecture, the structure of “sentences vs. punctuations” has later been theorized as “functional space vs. residual space*”, and the origin of prostitution vs. the origin of architecture intermingle in the making of history.

*some calls it feminin space, but I like residual better

Hong Kong Famous Designers Association

2007-05-04T23:33:00.000+08:00

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MATERIAL WHICH MAY OFFEND AND MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED, CIRCULATED, SOLD, HIRED, GIVEN, LENT, SHOWN, PLAYED OR PROJECTED TO A PERSON WHO IS NOT FAMOUS.

警告：本物品內容可能令人反感，不可將本物品派發、傳閱、出售、出租、交給或出借予非 出名 的人士或將本物品向該等人士出示、播放或放映.

Restricted (R) - The Authority may prohibit the display, exhibition, sale, lease, rental, exchange or distribution of the materials where the materials contain:

A graphic or prolonged scene of banality, cliché, mediocre, second-rate, sleazy, horror or human degradation;

The depiction of humiliation of human beings for the purposes of fame gratification or as pleasing to the victim of fame;

A scene where person who dress in all black is or is intended to represent others being inferior to the industry due to his/her non-famous status and appears in a scene of explicit and exploitative red wine drinking activity.

Wish u were here

2007-04-22T23:50:00.000+08:00

Korean B-Boy in town

Couldn't be more architectural than these-

Power, pivoting control, distribution of weak & strong movement, core strength, mental construct balancing points, gesture vs posture, inertia vs agile, bending vs creeping...

...all with an attitude.

Korean B-boy battle with US back then

Ubiquitous Shades

2007-04-22T00:13:00.000+08:00

Ubiquity (or being everywhereness) is an architectural disorder, a form of kaleidoscopic delusion manfests itself into various symptoms -

Schizophrenic design, crazy form, dementedness detail, deranging organization, flakiness surface, insane function, irrational scheme, mad construction, psychopathic interior, cataleptic circulations, paranoiac display, hypersomnia landscape, insane, unreasoning…

The most common symptom is Megalomania, a “Green” overdose of inductive reasoning-

Green is good
Sunshades have attributes of Green

More green ≡ better
.˙. More Sunshades are material equivalent to better
Everywhereness Green is more than perfect
.˙. Everywhereness Shades are material equivalent to more than perfect

Megalomaniac actions-

Provide many sunshades for solid walls &
Provide many sunshades for open stairways &
Provide many sunshades for roofs & plant rooms &
Provide many sunshades for windows with a view &
Provide many sunshades at everywhereness…
≡ perfect world

Floodwater Tank Pumping Station 蓄洪池抽水站

Education and Manpower Bureau 教育统籌局

International School 國際學校

The very convenient truth – The wooden formwork for the concrete sunshades of a residential tower can make up a forest. The manufacturing industries for aluminum are major pollution in China. Details here or Google here.

Seperated at birth

2007-04-17T20:00:00.000+08:00

@China - Developer vs. People

Bloggers give a damn > People win
Details here

@Hong Kong - Developer vs. Government & People

Government don't give a damn > People lost (as always)
Details here in chinese & english

The magic sound bites - “Green, Multi-functional, Interactive”

2007-04-16T23:58:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong is a noisy place, the frequency you hear of the magic sound bites in a presentation is very often in proportion to the degree of the building being much ado about nothing. Thoughtless spaces/ everywhereness sun-shades/ useless gadgets end up being labeled as “Multi-functional, Green, Interactive” respectively. Rarely do buildings live up to their claims nor anyone care about their implications for being a sound bite.

Escort industries redefine our habitual diagrams, their penetrations via internet into the hotels have ambiguously committed to our magical claims:

Interactive – An interactive space renders the shift of habitual domains. From virtual> real> hyper-real, 2D> 3D> 4D, immaterial> material> massive... You enter here> made selection> maneuver within city> bodily encounter… This shift of domain is interactive.

Green – Any change of use requires 0 remodeling is green.

Multi-functional – A shift of function where every elements are being utilized to the full extend. From being resort to escort, leisure to erotica, space unaltered while the sequence of action varies at every encounter. Showering, undressing, sexual intercourse, the habitual bubble diagrams are constantly refined by the escort services within an idling space of a hotel room.

In this regards, good slave recommend to substitute the magic word with a code:141 in future presentation, a form of environmental measure for Hong Kong to become a less noisy place.

Disclaimer: the stating of a social phenomenon at this blog here do not necessary promote nor encourage any terrestrial being to support or engage in the escort industry.

Buy it now and believe me later

2007-04-11T17:20:00.000+08:00

Good slave wishes there were days when fashion tycoon like LV invites feng shui masters for promotion with slogan "Wear Prada now and your descendents be rich later"

or showing other designer brand "Chanel, Hermes" in their commercials so as to imply their standard of quality...

then Igood slave knows we can all go naked and save some $$ for the needed.

中國國歌香港版 Chinese National Anthem

2007-04-09T23:34:00.000+08:00

起来！不愿做奴隶的人们! Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves;

把我们的血肉，With our very flesh and blood

筑成我们新的长城！Let us build our new Great Wall!

中华民族到了最危险的时候，The Peoples of China are in the most critical time,

每个人被迫着发出最后的吼声。Everybody must roar his defiance.

起来！起来！起来！Arise! Arise! Arise!

我们万众一心, Millions of hearts with one mind,

冒着敌人的炮火，Brave the enemy's gunfire,

前进！March on!

冒着敌人的炮火，前进！Brave the enemy's gunfire,

前进！前进！进！March on! March on! March on, on!

If the emergence of a nation defined by our founding father of not seeing oneself as slave and the struggle/conflict must continue and be celebrated through generations...

then as per Hong Kong Government recommendation, we being the descendents of former slaves shall enjoy the luxuries of life as means to defy slavery and to uphold our awareness.

Lyrics: Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves; > Images: Children enjoying education in a chinese style interior classroom.

Lyrics: With our very flesh and blood > Images: Family having a warm feast (Norman Rockwell style).

Lyrics: The Peoples of China are in the most dangerous time, > Images: People having check up by the Hong Kong medicals.

Lyrics: Brave the enemy's gunfire, March on! > Images: People enjoy viewing sexy models doing the runway show.

Good slave is not quite sure if our government being différance in meaning or just being purely deconstructivist of our nation's founding principle? (... of course good slave mean architecturally speaking)