Last night, I gave a talk at CKS on Constant, Cedric Price and Archigram (at the last minute, I decided to leave out Superstudio–it was a little outside the direction the talk took). It was a really nice audience. After the fact, I learned about half the people were architects. I’m still trying to find the right balance between being too journalisty (says my advisor at Yale) and too architecty (which made it so the talk wasn’t as accessible to some of my friends in the audience). But still: very nice to be a guest of CKS and to present to 40 people about something I love–something different than what I’ve researched this summer at Microsoft Research India.
About the title of the talk: it’s been popping up a number of places lately… it was quoted in a dissertation on Archigram, and I think Adam used it for a talk he gave at Design Engaged. My experience with “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” goes back 18 years. I first got to know the Richard Brautigan poem by this name when I was 16, thanks to a high school boyfriend who had taken all his dad’s Brautigan books. I particularly liked this galley of it.
With upcoming flights and such, I’m going to turn this presentation into a more academic paper. I already owe my advisor Emmanuel 20-30 pages on Cedric Price … this is the jumping-off point.