Welcome
Websites are comunication resources that inform, entertain, and connect. Often several functions occur at once and without clear explanation of the creator's intentions. This website fits that description. I've designed it with several functions, some of which are more clearly explained than others, some of which are more serious than others, and some which are more current than others. But it will inform, perhaps entertain, and could connect.
The site is conceptually organised around the topics of work, play and biography. These distinctions are generally stable, but sometimes they collapse into one another. This is to be expected.
Each topic has elements of information, entertainment and archival functions. The work-related material is generally explained more overtly than either of the other two topics, whereas the biographical and play features are generally presented without explanantion, primarily as Flash movies, but also as text and graphics.
Some areas of the site are of more recent origin than others. Some of the older bits are timeless or precious little artefacts, while others are simply out of date. I tend to develop and update in piecemeal fashion rather than rebuilding all at once. The site is a structure that's simultaneously being built, extended, remodeled, neglected, abandoned and knocked down. I make the stuff, I build the site, I update it. As time allows.
The Big Intention
One of the more overt, ambitious and difficult intentions for this site is that it function as a guide to the kinds of work I am trying to do. In particular, the site is meant to introduce my work on landscape issues, including the study of landscape as a manifestation of social relations, my research on the role of dereliction as a social space, and the role of landscape design in fostering, mediating or thwarting social relations, such as the ways landscape design is used to promote social engagement, community and inclusion in some instances and disengagement, isolation and exclusion in others. Sometimes I think I'm trying to uncover that which landscape design obscures. Sometimes I think I'm just writing about what I see.
The big intent is to write about these things in an overarching way, and to practice what I preach by developing socio-spatial projects. This is more easily said than done. I am assembling a profession through my own research and by getting involved in other people's projects when I have the chance. The thing starts and stops, is shunted to one side and finds new terrain to cover. It is not a linear process, but something headed in several directions at once, and always in danger of total collapse.
The website is a vehicle for showing some of those directions, albeit in a fragmented fashion. There is no overarching narrative as yet. For the moment, it exists mainly in my mind, not here on the page. The task of writing an overarching narrative will have to wait until circumstances make it possible. In the meantime, visitors have access to parts of the picture, and may find the site both informative and entertaining.
Biography: The Professional Is Personal Is Visual
Another function of the website is to portray some of my background, both professionally and personally. Showing where I've been makes it easier to see where I'm going. You want to know a bit about my background? This is the place to find it. There's a PDF of my CV, a visual portfolio, a little movie about where I've lived, and snapshots of family and friends.
Play: Humor In Distortion and Variation
In addition to those functions, the site serves as a vehicle for my sense of humor, which finds its way into every page, usually in obscure ways. For example, the color scheme on this page is derived from the psychedelic beacon on the home page, which came into existence as a deliberate attempt to create distortion and feedback in a Flash movie. (It worked!)
The hexadecimal color of the beacon is 99-99-FF. Transposing the hexadecimal pairs gave me 99-FF-99 and FF-99-99. The combination works within the RGB system, and is similar to the primary triad, but is also distinct from it. In other words, there is a thematic coherence but it's not the usual one.
Why I would choose to do something like that is anybody's guess.
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