- Architectures of Hiding
Architectures of Hiding is the first symposium organized by Carleton Research | Practice of Teaching | Collaborative (CR|PT|C). The symposium, its online exhibition and the artistic dialogues Artengine collaborated on with CRIPTIC examined the idea of hiding in architectural design, construction and destruction, writing and drawing and of course in research. Artengine worked with CRIPTIC to produce a series of conversations with the creators presenting work in the online exhibition. Artist Interviews The Architectures of…
Read more: Architectures of Hiding
- Structured Spaces: Artistic Encoding of the Urban Environment
Contributed this text to the Heritage House and Surrey Art Gallery publication on the wonderful work of Sylvia Grace Borda. Artengine was extensively involved with Borda’s project, Every Bus Stop in Surrey. This text is a reflection on our work with her and the early days of art, technology and the public realm. In the early 1990’s, net art was still in its infancy and access to technology for artists most often meant collaborating with…
Read more: Structured Spaces: Artistic Encoding of the Urban Environment
- Useless Architecture
Critical Reflection on Architecture and the Public Realm The video was first produced during my Master Thesis and later refined for publication in Uselessness: Humankind’s most valuable tool published by De Gruyter in 2020. Below is an excerpt. Full PDF here. Useless Architecture text by Ryan Stec drawings by Ryan Stec and Véronique Couillard from: Howard, Michelle and Parodi, Luciano. Uselessness: Humankind’s most valuable tool?, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020. Lewis Carroll The Hunting of…
Read more: Useless Architecture
- Organized Time: Temporal Representations and the Possibilities of the Database
In this essay, I argue that the database, as a technology and a cultural object, can provide productive common ground for artists and designers to contribute to a broader dialogue around spatial and temporal representations in maps and mapping. This dialogue is important because, in general, the world-making act of cartographic representation lacks a temporal dimension.
- The Contemporary Manifesto
This text appears in the YYZ publication, What is our role? Artists in Academia and the Post-Knowledge Economy edited by Jaclyn Meloche Ph.D. Reflecting on the question posed by the publication, I imagined a dialogue between my artistic, architectural and intellectual self, accompanied by a series of diagrams, on what a contemporary manifesto for artists and designers in educational institutions would be.
- Video is dead: the generic has consumed everything. Be it resolved that video is dead.
Video is dead because the generic has consumed everything. Video is dead in much the same way that the internet does not exist.[1] There is no singular and useful thing that we can call the internet. I raise this same question for video, is there any singular and useful thing called video? Has it collapsed under the weight of its own multiplicity? Has it consumed and been consumed? Have any media survived the incredible force of the digital revolution?
- Circulation City
While cities have always been a connective tissue for circulation of all kinds, a city in movement became a particular and almost hyperbolic modern fascination. Twentieth century expansions of the city, both in concept and mass, were dominated by concepts of circulation. In North America, the contemporary city continues to be captured in this legacy. As the size and population of cities grow, the flow of materials, manufactured goods and people, both as consumers and labour, occupies an ever expanding place in municipal policy and resource investment. As this circulatory character of the city continues to develop, questions arise about the city as an instrument of perpetual motion. Where does the motion lead? How do we find our place in the flows of the city? What would it mean to resist its movements? While activists of all kinds have strategically disrupted circulation with clear and direct intent, artists have taken more obscure approaches. Unlike the instrumental disruption of circulation for social and political ends, we find something more useless at work: artistic projects. As the utility of the city grows, made material in the designs of traffic engineers, is it in need of useless interventions? This essay moves. It circulates through ideas on movement in the city (at an uncomfortable speed). Meanwhile, it is continually side tracked by creative interruptions as it considers artistic positions against the flow of the city.
- The Now of Tasman Richardson
Galleries and museums are not places of the moment. They are, essentially, built for the past; they are houses for the artifacts of action. Contemporary artists are often challenged by this. They strategize to find a place for the present in spaces designed to organize and stabilize the past. They confront this past with a blooming and tumbling array of expressions of the now, but inevitably the representation of the present seems an impossible task. How can you hold on to the present for display? How do you represent the moment of now?
Architectures of Hiding is the first symposium organized by Carleton Research | Practice of Teaching | Collaborative (CR|PT|C). The symposium, its online exhibition and the artistic dialogues Artengine collaborated on with CRIPTIC examined the idea of hiding in architectural design, construction and destruction, writing and drawing and of course in research. Artengine worked with CRIPTIC to produce a series of conversations with the creators presenting work in the online exhibition. Artist Interviews The Architectures of… Read more: Architectures of Hiding
Contributed this text to the Heritage House and Surrey Art Gallery publication on the wonderful work of Sylvia Grace Borda. Artengine was extensively involved with Borda’s project, Every Bus Stop in Surrey. This text is a reflection on our work with her and the early days of art, technology and the public realm. In the early 1990’s, net art was still in its infancy and access to technology for artists most often meant collaborating with… Read more: Structured Spaces: Artistic Encoding of the Urban Environment
Critical Reflection on Architecture and the Public Realm The video was first produced during my Master Thesis and later refined for publication in Uselessness: Humankind’s most valuable tool published by De Gruyter in 2020. Below is an excerpt. Full PDF here. Useless Architecture text by Ryan Stec drawings by Ryan Stec and Véronique Couillard from: Howard, Michelle and Parodi, Luciano. Uselessness: Humankind’s most valuable tool?, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020. Lewis Carroll The Hunting of… Read more: Useless Architecture
In this essay, I argue that the database, as a technology and a cultural object, can provide productive common ground for artists and designers to contribute to a broader dialogue around spatial and temporal representations in maps and mapping. This dialogue is important because, in general, the world-making act of cartographic representation lacks a temporal dimension.
This text appears in the YYZ publication, What is our role? Artists in Academia and the Post-Knowledge Economy edited by Jaclyn Meloche Ph.D. Reflecting on the question posed by the publication, I imagined a dialogue between my artistic, architectural and intellectual self, accompanied by a series of diagrams, on what a contemporary manifesto for artists and designers in educational institutions would be.
Video is dead because the generic has consumed everything. Video is dead in much the same way that the internet does not exist.[1] There is no singular and useful thing that we can call the internet. I raise this same question for video, is there any singular and useful thing called video? Has it collapsed under the weight of its own multiplicity? Has it consumed and been consumed? Have any media survived the incredible force of the digital revolution?
While cities have always been a connective tissue for circulation of all kinds, a city in movement became a particular and almost hyperbolic modern fascination. Twentieth century expansions of the city, both in concept and mass, were dominated by concepts of circulation. In North America, the contemporary city continues to be captured in this legacy. As the size and population of cities grow, the flow of materials, manufactured goods and people, both as consumers and labour, occupies an ever expanding place in municipal policy and resource investment. As this circulatory character of the city continues to develop, questions arise about the city as an instrument of perpetual motion. Where does the motion lead? How do we find our place in the flows of the city? What would it mean to resist its movements? While activists of all kinds have strategically disrupted circulation with clear and direct intent, artists have taken more obscure approaches. Unlike the instrumental disruption of circulation for social and political ends, we find something more useless at work: artistic projects. As the utility of the city grows, made material in the designs of traffic engineers, is it in need of useless interventions? This essay moves. It circulates through ideas on movement in the city (at an uncomfortable speed). Meanwhile, it is continually side tracked by creative interruptions as it considers artistic positions against the flow of the city.
Galleries and museums are not places of the moment. They are, essentially, built for the past; they are houses for the artifacts of action. Contemporary artists are often challenged by this. They strategize to find a place for the present in spaces designed to organize and stabilize the past. They confront this past with a blooming and tumbling array of expressions of the now, but inevitably the representation of the present seems an impossible task. How can you hold on to the present for display? How do you represent the moment of now?