(Image above: Bruce Barber, Kiss, 1973, Slide/sound installation. From Artspace.)

I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the Bruce Barber psuedo-retrospective at Artspace on Thursday and was very impressed.  I’ll admit, I wasn’t familiar with the Canada based, New Zealand born artist but the work, from 70’s Fluxus era events to 90’s political activism to recent temporal projects analyzing Australian popular media and its coverage of immigration, was inspiring.

Recommended.

As Anthony at Offshore and Marcus at Super Colossal have reported, Iron Architect was a ton of fun.

Each team was assigned a specific type of mass transit to investigate with the goal of providing innovative solutions in a few hours.  Our team was assigned the task of researching an underground metro system.  We hit the ground running and quickly formed a thesis involving a decentralized, sentient system of individual pods that travel in a viscous subterranean strata.

This project continues and we look forward to sharing our new research with you, asap…

Below: the future of SO-AD

Images by Sarah Benton + Marcus Trimble

Hello West Coast!

Do they call it the “West Coast”? We’ll assume that they do.

Regardless, David Burns will be traveling cross country on Thursday (9 October 2008) to deliver a talk and participate in juries at the University of Western Australia in Perth. 

Specs:
Thursday, 9 October 2008, 6pm
Hew Roberts Lecture Theatre (I think)
University of Western Australia, Perth

If you’re in the area, please stop by and say hello and heckle. 

SO-AD was invited to team up with our homies at Offshore Studio to compete in this year’s Iron Architect competition, a component of the Sydney Architecture Festival.

SO-AD has drafted one Adam Jasper (art historian, Vice and Frieze writer and general Sydney bon vivant) to join the team. Huzzah!

We have big plans, including but not limited to the following:

1. Various references to planet-destroying space stations.
2. Coordinated outfits.
3. Questioning simple concepts, like gravity.

Hello all!  While I’m sure you’re too caught up in the RNC to worry about lil ole SO-AD, we thought we’d take this opportunity to sneak in some news.  Hey, if it works for Sarah “now that my 17 year old daughter proved that abstinence doesn’t work, I’ll announce the preganancy during a hurricane!!” Palin, it’ll work for us.

News!  In handy OCD list format:

1. Progress on the Federal Street Residence is moving along swimmingly with construction already underway.  We’ll have some big announcements about this history-making (we aren’t kidding) project ASAP.
2. We’re gladly welcoming back some clients for some new SO-AD love.  Hello FLUX and Andy Warhol Museum!
3. On the academic front, Jason is back teaching at Carnegie Mellon and David is already mid semester with his MDA students in Sydney.
4. Speaking of Sydney, SO-AD has been invited to participate in the next “Iron Architect” competition to be held during the Sydney Architecture Festival.  We’ll be teaming up with our mates at Offshore Studio to rethink Sydney in realtime in the Customs House.  More info soon.

Good times, folks.  Get in touch.

Hello folks.

We’re making the abrupt change to Wordpress 2.6.1 and things are wonky.  We’ll have things worked out ASAP.

xo
SO-AD

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE
So, I think I’ve worked out all the bugs.  If you get any weirdness on the blog, fire off an email, yo.

No rest for the wicked.  David will deliver a talk at Terrior, an exciting architectural practice here in Sydney, for those of you stateside.

Things kick off at 5:45pm.  Apparently the lift shuts down at 6, so then it becomes some sort of architectural lock-in.  Sweet.

The deets:

Monday, 18 August 2008

Terrior
Suite 802
32 York Street
Sydney NSW

Pow!

David will lead off this semester’s public lecture series at UTS on 7 August 2008.  David’s talk will address the image.

Do come.

7 August 2008, 7pm
Rm322

UTS Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building
702-730 Harris Street
Ultimo NSW 2007

A few weeks ago we submitted a model for the Australia Pavilion at the upcoming Venice Biennale.  The blog over at DesignBoom recently featured a few of the models and they were kind enough to include our little Moire House.

Check it:

Read the entire post here.

Yo.  The Vector Guerillas work from the Sydney Future Visions exhibition / conference is featured in the new issue of Architectural Review (Australia).  SO-AD collaborated with the Guerrillas on a project titled States of Convergence, led by the fantastic duo of Anthony Burke and Joanne Jakovich.