School has started and that means the guest speaker colloquium organized by the five people in my class has started. We're really excited about it. It's called "Critical Imaginaries" and focuses on visionary representations of architecture and space in differen media: music, film, literature, video games, image, theory. 40 people showed up for the first session with Brown University's Dietrich Neumann, a visiting professor here this semester (he talked about panoramas). It's just a 12 person course, so that's a great sign.
Next week, DJ Spooky, aka Paul Miller is coming. I'm thrilled and can't wait to meet him. We'll also go see Lebbeus Woods (amazing visionary architect, professor at Cooper Union) in his studio, visit MoMA's architecture archives and receive a tour from Chief Architecture Curator Barry Bergdoll. When we're in New York, we're planning to do a Big Game, Crossroads, with the wonderful Kevin Slavin of area/code. Ralitza Petit, whose dissertation at Harvard's Graduate School of Design addressed Everquest and its architectural space, will talk about architecture and video games.
We've also got Ed Dimendberg, Jonathan Crary, Sylvère Lotringer, Reinhold Martin and Ben Nicholson.
Unfortunately, here, I'm fighting off some kind of bug. I'm not entirely sick but feel like it's just about to happen. For some reason, I just couldn't sleep last night, finally getting up at 4 a.m. and staying up till 6. I'm working from home today but the water's been turned off in my building while they do repairs.