weeknotes 07 to 09

I got behind on my weeknotes as I’ve been dealing with some personal business and caring for someone after a surgery, both during the hospital stay and beyond. (Everything went well.) As a result, my productivity isn’t quite as speedy as it’s been of late. I’m not sure it’s going to be all that great this week, given that I’m heading to South by Southwest tomorrow for my 13th time. I’ve been on the advisory board for SXSW Interactive for 12 years. It’s the only thing I do every single year (I don’t even celebrate the holidays with my family with this much regularity). I’ll write more about SXSW separately and instead recap my anomalous couple of weeks–weeks that have less to do with generative systems and more to do with running, yoga, and hospital art collections.

First, Cedars-Sinai Hospital. I certainly didn’t expect to be blown away by the art in a hospital, but there was a stunning collection of small-numbered prints and sculptures created in LA or by LA artists in the 1960s-80s. Claes Oldenburg prints from September 1968. Ed Ruscha sketches in the 1980s. One of my favorites in the ward on the 8th floor: a poster from the 1965 Art and Science exhibition at the Albany Institute of History and Art. The nurse was kind enough to show me how the pneumatic tube system functioned, something that made me nearly giddy, given my fascination with the subject.

I wrote an article on Cedric Price’s Generator for the next issue of Crit (the theme for which is “Architects without Architecture“). It got me thinking about Price–the subject of my master’s thesis — will fit into my dissertation on generative systems. Bryan Boyer asked me, in response to my list of qualities of generative systems, what didn’t qualify. The key is that they’re generated from some set of algorithms. Simple question, one I need to sort out.

Finally, running. Since I arrived in LA, I’ve been running several times a week. Although I’ve been running for a little over a year steadily, this is the greatest mileage I’ve accumulated. I ran the most disorganized 5K ever on Saturday and managed to come in 4th among women runners and 11th overall.Yesterday, I ran 6 miles, the furthest I’ve ever run. In fact, I don’t get winded and yesterday’s long run didn’t even make me sore. Maybe that’s because yoga causes me so much more pain: I went to three yoga classes in the course of a week. You’d think that Venice is made of yoga studios and marijuana dispensaries, with incidental restaurants, shops and Intelligentsia coffee. Anyway, maybe I’ve become one-of-those-people, but there are worse things. I’ve never been in such strong physical shape.